


Life in the Ruins

by ArwenKenobi



Series: Not in Blood but in Bond 'verse [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Lestrade-centric, Post Reichenbach, References to Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 04:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenKenobi/pseuds/ArwenKenobi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes may have died on 15 June 2012 but the afterlife was what awaited Greg Lestrade, John Watson, and everyone else the detective left in the ruins after he'd jumped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Companion fic to [Not in Blood but in Bond](http://archiveofourown.org/works/449936). Not necessary to have read it to understand this one though.
> 
>  
> 
> Written for [ "holmes_big_bang"](http://holmes-big-bang.livejournal.com/) at LiveJournal.

Before the Fall Greg Lestrade's ringtone had been a standard mobile ringtone. Immediately after the Fall he'd changed it (or rather had had Tess help him change it) to "Don't Bring Me Down" by ELO, his standard 'don't let the bastards get you down' tune. He had lasted three days before changing it back to the generic chime. Karen, sneaky little whelp of a thing that she was, later changed it to Eric Clapton's "Everybody Oughta Make A Change" as her attempt at encouragement. He'd resent the implication there but considering that he has thus far spent his suspension (paid- thank God) on the couch watching whatever people who watched telly during the day watched or else spending far too much time playing solitaire or hearts on his laptop he really has no right to. He's tried to avoid the internet as much as he can. The temptation to Google himself, John, or Sherlock is just too high and as much he doesn't like his laptop he doesn't feel like replacing it after he throws it across the room and breaks it in half.

He doesn't have strong feelings one way or the other for this song but he knows for sure that he'll break his mobile if Eric Clapton keeps singing at him for one minute longer. It has been ringing nonstop for the past five minutes. The date and time keep flashing annoyingly at him, reminding him that is the forty fifth day of his sixty day suspension and that it is eleven in the morning and he is still not dressed for the day. Or moved from this couch since last night. 

The thing also tells him that the number calling him is blocked, which means it is either the Yard or Mycroft and he has no intention of talking to either of them. Not that whatever crap is on right now is that engrossing - he thinks it's something that even Tess would refuse to watch and Tess's taste was questionable at the best of times - but one of the few things that give Lestrade pleasure these days is sticking to his suspension out of spite. Especially in the aftermath of the truth being known. Part of it is retaliation to his coworkers for not believing in Sherlock or in him; the rest is him punishing himself because he didn't believe in Sherlock enough either. Yeah, Sally would have just gone right over his head anyway but he could have made more noise. Or waylaid her. Done something to stop Sherlock from jumping. 

Maybe he would have noticed the fucking mole in his own department who'd had a gun trained on him that day. Maybe he would have seen him before Sally did - would have gotten answers and gotten to John and stopped everything before it even started. 

Lestrade huffs and reaches for the cup of tea on the coffee table. He quickly sets it back down when he remembers that was brewed last night and certainly is disgusting by now. He couldn't have stopped it. Nothing could stop Sherlock Holmes when he had a plan in motion and when it was sound. 

Stupid bastard. He isn't sure if he's referring to himself or Sherlock. 

Eric Clapton keeps fucking singing: _Change in the ocean. Change in the sea. Come back baby, you'll find a change in me._

Louise sticks her head in. “Dad?”

“It’s fine.” He turns the volume up on the telly. Karen immediately bellows from the floor above for him to turn it down. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” he bellows up in reply. 

“I don’t start ‘til one!”

“So when does Tess start then?” 

“Tess's already in Southwark,” Louise tells him. Karen must have shoved some headphones on or something. “She’ll be home ‘round half six.” 

There were many times that Lestrade wondered how he managed this house. When the girls were in school it was a lot easier to keep track of them. Granted Louise more or less took care of herself now. To be honest Louise has been taking care of everyone since her mother left and that was nearly twenty years ago. She's been especially dutiful to him over the past forty-five days and Lestrade feels guilty for it. He's not ill and he's not an invalid but he'll take Louise making dinner and worrying about the schedules and the car. It is a mess at the best of times. 

The girls were certainly all old enough to manage their own affairs with or without Louise playing Mum. Tess would be more than capable if she were less of a worrier and less dramatic. Karen, the baby of the Lestrade girls at seventeen, was more self sufficient than Tess and only the care that Karen really needed was making sure she got fed. She was the type to get wrapped up in something and forget. Now Karen has her first summer job at a record shop, Tess works for the National Theatre as a stage hand, and Louise is volunteering as a tutor at the university and was also working for another private tutoring company. Between the three of them he really should have a chart on the fridge or in the front hall or something. 

It would help him know where everyone was but it didn’t help ease the fact that his girls were off and doing things, whether that was work or otherwise, and he was at home doing nothing. Karen had wanted him to fight the suspension once the truth had been out there. That Sherlock Holmes was real and that Richard Brook (Richen Bach, how had they missed that one?) was a lie. Some of that was thanks to the I Believe in Sherlock Holmes movement, some of it probably thanks to Mycroft Holmes, but most of it was the product of the hard work of John Watson. 

Lestrade had heard Sherlock Holmes’s final call to John. He wasn’t supposed to have heard it but Paul Dimmock had slipped it his way because he wanted someone John was friends with to know exactly what he was dealing with. Not that Lestrade had had much of an opportunity to do whatever good Dimmock had been hoping for but if Lestrade was haunted by that call he couldn't begin to imagine how it haunted John. Hearing Sherlock 'admit' to being a fake was enough but then hearing him try and not only ask John to believe it but to spread the lie was too much for anyone to bear. 

In response to this directive John had done the complete opposite. It had kept him going for a time as he’d fought the naysayers and presented evidence and, if rumour was to be believed, actively encouraged the I Believe In Sherlock Holmes movement. John, of course, never responded to any accusations on that front. All he ever said to anyone who asked him about Sherlock was the same message he had posted on his final blog entry: "He was my best friend and I’ll always believe in him." There are YouTube mash ups of all the sound bites that existed of John saying that. Lestrade knows because he’s seen them all. As much as he tries to avoid the internet it takes a stronger man than he to resist the siren call of YouTube. 

At any rate since the truth was put out there, and John had vanished back into obscurity, the Yard has been trying to reach him. Whether it was them firing him or them begging him to come back Lestrade does not care. He is not answering any calls from anyone not immediate family, Dimmock, or John. Not that John is ever going to ring him. He’s been waiting weeks for him to do it and he very badly wants to do it himself but he knows that he can’t. 

About two weeks after Sherlock’s death they had met each other in the hallway while leaving their respective therapists’ offices. Louise and Karen know that Lestrade is seeing somebody but Tess is being kept in the dark for his own sanity. No one else knows and Lestrade much prefers to keep it that way. He’d just shut the door on Lily when John had walked out of the room across and two doors down the hall from him. At first they’d pretended to not notice each other but then John had deliberately altered his path to bump into him. It hadn’t been a sign of aggression or a stumble but a cautious, friendly shoulder bump even if the warmth and affection was missing. “You shouldn’t blame yourself,” he’d whispered, defeated. 

He hadn't known John all that long but he knew him enough to know that John had never looked like this. That John should never look or sound like this. Knowing this he'd still bitten back the desire to tell him that he shouldn't blame himself either. John wouldn’t stop because he asked him to and he wouldn’t insult him by trying to give him advice. 

“Shouldn’t, perhaps," Lestrade had said instead. "It is what it is though.” He'd looked around awkwardly after this talk of blame. “Think we’ll see Sally or Dave here?” He has no idea why he’d said that. Bumping into them would have been a horror show and that had been his opinion before John’s reaction. 

The old John, the John from before the Fall and the John that Sherlock had relied on, would have scoffed at that and said something offhand and sarcastic. This John had instead looked damned near murderous and the tone in which he’d said “we’d better not” made Lestrade’s blood run cold. He’d put men under watch for less than that and he remembers almost stepping away in fear of what the Fall had left behind. 

If only he’d listened to Sherlock. If only he’d held his ground. He’d trusted the man when he’d been nothing but a homeless drug addict so what had been stopping him from keeping the faith? If only...

“I told you not to blame yourself. I don’t. Not anymore.” 

“And you blame Sally and Dave?” 

“ Not really,” John had admitted after a moment. “They were doing their jobs and Sher....well, he would say the same at the end of it all. Probably even compliment Sally for using her head for once.” He'd looked away quickly before going on, hand shaking as it wiped across his face. “I’ve got to put some of the blame somewhere though. Otherwise...” John shrugs and lets the sentence trail off. 

Lestrade had quickly offered to do lunch or something at that point. That they should go grab a pint like the old days. John had agreed that they should but that he’d ring him when he was ready to do it. “I just need some time alone.” 

Some time alone is the absolute last thing that John needs. It had been bad for him then and it was just as bad for him now. No one has seen him since the official announcement. Lestrade had rang Mrs. Hudson a couple times since then and the way she spoke about him almost matched the way she would speak of Sherlock when he was in a strop. She barely saw him anyway it seemed. He worked and then went straight upstairs. Lestrade wonders what had made him come back to 221b. Initially he’d moved elsewhere and then had come back just before he’d started the fight to clear Sherlock's name. 

It doesn’t matter, he supposes. It isn’t healthy perhaps but he is not going to tell John that he can’t live there. People had told him to move after Anne had left him and the girls but here they had stayed. Partly because Lestrade had been hoping for Anne to come back to them, or rather to the girls if not him, but mostly because it was home and wasn’t going to uproot his girls. They'd been aged five, three, and five months at the time. He’d considered moving once he’d received the paperwork for a divorce and a renouncement of Anne’s parental rights but had decided to stay in the end. Now he doesn't even think of Anne except on rare times like these when he brings her up himself. They had redecorated several times since then so it is hard to picture her here now. 

John, on the other hand, would leave everything as it was. Lestrade could see it now. They may have only known each other a year and a half but they were mates and he knew John well enough. Not mates the way John and Sherlock were but mates nonetheless. 

Were. Lestrade shuts the telly off and ignores yet another blocked number call on his mobile. He's going to change the ringtone again the second this thought finishes, he decides. Such a thing as John and Sherlock could never have a past tense. John and Sherlock are still mates in every sense of the word and that is why John is what he is and suffers to the degree that he does. He will always suffer in one way or another for the rest of his life and for that Lestrade is very, very sorry and very, very scared. He wishes he could do something but he knows there is nothing to be done. For some people there is no going back. 

“You stupid bastard,” Lestrade curses a man who can’t hear him. “You stupid, stupid, bastard. You died to save John but you may have killed him anyway.” Lestrade is appropriately grateful for what lengths Sherlock was willing to go to protect them all but he knows, as does Mrs. Hudson, that this was all for John. Had it just been the either of them Sherlock would have thought more, would have managed to think up something mad to save the day and come out looking brilliant. Once John was brought into it Sherlock was a dead man. Sherlock would do anything for John and they’d all known it. Everyone except John it seemed. John had been resigned to things being a bit one sided between them, Lestrade reckons. How wrong had he been and how badly did he wish that he had been told or shown in some other way. 

_Change in the weather. Change in the sea. Come back, baby, you'll find a change in me._

He ignores it. Maybe he should check on John anyway. Someone should. No one should face this alone. Lestrade has half toyed with the idea of reporting him for the gun, the paperwork from Mycroft be damned. He tells himself that he doesn't because he wants John to keep the protection in case any remnants of Moriarty’s organization come his way but really Lestrade thinks....Lestrade doesn’t want to acknowledge what he thinks. 

His mobile and the landline start ringing together. Blocked number still on the mobile and he sighs irritably when he realises the hand set isn't sitting in its cradle. “Louise!” he yells down the hall. “What’s the number?”

Louise reports that the number's blocked as well. It almost feels like the old days but Lestrade gets up to retrieve the handset from across the room instead of answering the mobile. His knees sound like they're splintering and they feel like it too. He pushes the 'talk' button. “How do you do that?”

“Irrelevant. I’ve been calling you for fifteen minutes and you haven’t been answering.” 

“There’s a reason for that –“ 

“ You need to get to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital at once.” 

“Why on Earth would I want to go there?” Lestrade never needed to be around there, thankfully, and he has no intention of ever setting foot in the building ever again. 

That stance vanishes when Mycroft Holmes tells him that John has been spotted on the roof. 


	2. Chapter Two

He is not one to wish fire and destruction on historical sites but at Sherlock Holmes’ funeral he had found himself praying that Hell would open and swallow up St. Bart's. When this had proved fruitless Lestrade had spent a good chunk of his first week of suspension wondering if he could successfully evacuate everyone in the vicinity and then burn it down without getting caught. Then again John and Sherlock had met as well as parted at St. Bart's so perhaps the thing had to be allowed to go on after all. More's the pity.

Lestrade hasn’t had to run since that whole mess – chasing Tess down the street with her forgotten Oyster card does not count – but he runs out of the house and to the Tube and he keeps running until he reaches Bart’s. He doesn’t stop to take in the building or stop to look up at the roof. If John is there he can certainly see him coming, if he is able to see anything at all, and Lestrade takes the absence of police or paramedics or crowds to mean that John hasn’t done anything stupid yet.

He sprints up the stairs, flashing his ID to any confused staff he bowls over, and eventually reaches the roof. “John!” he shouts without properly looking. The door thwacks the brick wall hard and then quietly clicks closed.

John’s laughter is terrifying and sounds like another man’s entirely. When Lestrade does actually look at what's in front of him he almost sees Sherlock standing on the ledge facing the city instead of John. What breaks the image is the height difference, lack of coat, and the ear bud stuck in John’s ear. When the hell had John bought an iPod? “Do I look like I’m ready to jump?” John hasn't turned to look at him yet.

Lestrade has to admit that John, at least from the back, just looks relaxed. That could be a good thing or a bad thing but he sees a notebook and pen sitting on the ledge and what looks like takeaway safely tucked under it and out of the wind. It is unopened. John is not a man for dramatics or props. There’d be nothing left up here for them if he planned on jumping and he wouldn't have been loitering up here so long either.

John hops down. Lestrade’s nearly vomits his heart out of his mouth as he sees John expertly catch himself and settle down on it with his feet dangling over the edge. He removes the ear bud and takes out an iPhone, a very familiar looking iPhone, taps the screen and wraps the ear buds around them. “Come along,” he nudges as he pockets phone and earphones and grabs the takeaway. “There’s enough for two.”

Wake up, man. Lestrade resists the urge to tap his cheeks. He has clearly dozed off in front of the telly again and is not where he is and not having a conversation that he should be having with one of the Holmes brothers.

“It’s vegetarian, sorry,” John apologizes as Lestrade moves closer in spite of his own misgivings. “I was expecting Mycroft. He called you instead, I see.”

“I told him that he should have been calling 999 and not me.”

“If he had you still would have arrived first.” He ushers for Lestrade to sit down. He does but he sits with his feet firmly on the ground and his back to the city and the ground below. “Yes we’re at a hospital but 999 still has to go through their own channels. What happened here before was unusual.”

Help had arrived almost instantly when Sherlock had jumped; Lestrade remembers that from the reports. He can’t remember just now whether someone had run in demanding help or whether the team had just been returning from another call or what. It was all wonderfully timed and wonderfully orchestrated. It was a last gift to John, Lestrade supposed. According to Molly it seemed that he had known what he was going to do, she’d tried to talk to him and hadn’t got much out of him. So he’d made it so John hadn’t been the one to declare him dead or deal with any of that nonsense. John had certainly not seen it as a blessing or a gift but Lestrade can be thankful where John can’t. There would be no John left at all if it had been otherwise.

“If I wanted to die I wouldn’t jump off a building.” John continues eating his lunch as if he isn’t sitting where he’s sitting and hasn’t said something so perfectly disturbing. “There’s too much of a chance of survival here.”

Lestrade gawks at John and then does the same at the very distant pavement. “You’re kidding right?” He doesn’t want to say it but it lies there between them. 

“There’s a chance, I said.” John corrects. “Not a large one but big enough that if you did live you’d be a vegetable or in a world of pain if you landed feet first. If I wanted to die I’d choose something more certain.”

John’s gun pops into Lestrade’s mind again. John shakes his head, knowing full well what he’s thinking. He wonders if perhaps John and Sherlock actually managed to become one person after all, or if Sherlock is possessing John. “I’ve thought about the gun before but not now. I wouldn’t do that to Mrs. Hudson.”

“So how would you do it then?”

John smiles wryly around the plastic fork. He sets it down along with his meal. “Can’t tell you.”

Lestrade goes on high alert. “Why not?”

John almost says that he knows why but decides that now is not the time to spare Lestrade’s feelings. Or perhaps he’s decided that no one’s feelings matter anymore. “Because if I choose to exercise my right to end it I don’t want to be interrupted. Suffice to say none of you would be the ones to find me if I did.”

“You have a right to kill yourself? Since when?”

“I happen to think that it’s perfectly reasonable to choose to end your life with dignity if the alternative is unbearable. I've helped people do it before."

“You’re not suffering from terminal cancer, John!” Lestrade sputters. “You’ve suffered a loss, a major loss, but you’ll go on. I know you will and he knew you would.”

“You people clearly don’t know the first thing about me then.”

“He died for you!” Lestrade finally shouts. Sensitivity and subtly be damned. “Sherlock Holmes died to keep you safe. Do you honestly intend to tell me you would just throw his sacrifice away like that? “

“Contrary to what you and the rest of the Yard may think, he does not own me.”

Unbelievable, Lestrade thinks. If one life is bought with another does that not mean something? If John does do it and there is life after death he hopes Sherlock destroys him. “I never said that. I just didn’t take you for the type of man to take a friend’s sacrifice in vain.”

The wind whips around them and, even though it’s July, Lestrade shivers and wishes he’d brought a jacket. He’d run right past one on the stairs and he’d known full well he was going on a roof. He hadn’t thought. There were better things to worry about at the time.

“I’m not actually going to do it, you know.” 

Lestrade wishes he could believe him and his eyes must give him away. John slowly morphs into a shadow of the man he’d been when he admits that he would not be so selfish as to throw Sherlock’s sacrifice away like that. He nearly chokes on his friend’s name. Lestrade thinks it’s the first time he’s said it aloud in a long time. “Sometimes though,” he admits. “Sometimes I really, really want to. It’s not that I’m not trying, Greg. I’m doing what I can but there’s just no going back for me, now. Do you understand? It’s always going to feel like this and don’t tell me that it’s not. I do not think I can live the rest of my life this way. I know I can’t. It's not an if for me; it's a when.”

He’s right and Lestrade has known it for a long time now. John may not give up now, this month, this year, or even five years from now but one day he will. Everyone knows it. He said that John didn’t have terminal cancer but, he supposes, he just might in his own way. Lestrade will not be surprised or even blame John if in a few years time he gets a phone call telling him that John's gone. Lestrade might even help him when the time comes and he does not even want to think about what that says about him.

“Then you need to talk to me, “ he says instead. “Or someone else if not me. Go for a run. Write. Solve a case. You know they’ll start begging you for help soon. I know I will once I’m back, legitimately of course. My point is that you need to do something to make it quieter.”

“He always hated them.”

“What?”

“The blog entries.”

“No he didn’t.” Lestrade almost smiles. How could John not know this? He resists the urge to clasp his shoulder. “He may not have liked that you made them read like actual stories and not reports but he liked them in his own way. I’ve caught him reading them and correcting people on details that they’ve misquoted or misattributed. I’ve even heard him tell off Mycroft for saying your blog entries were boring.”

John sort of deflates as he puts his elbows on his knees and puts his head in his hands. He’s muttering something to himself and Lestrade does not try to overhear what it is. He knows it’s not meant for him.

“Have you spoken to Mycroft?”

“Not since the will was read and I don’t plan to talk to him again, thanks.” There’s a story there about the will that Lestrade can hear wanting to break out but John holds onto it for now. There is no need to wonder about John’s refusal to talk to Mycroft. 

They sit for awhile in comfortable silence until John gets up with a tired sigh. “I have to get back to work.” Lestrade peeks at his mobile. It must be the end of John's lunch break, or well over it. It depends on what shift he's on. 

“Do you promise to text me if you find yourself up here again?” The ‘or anywhere else pondering whether or not the next sixty years of your life will be worth it’ is implied.

“I’ll do my best.”

Lestrade will take what he can get.

==================================================================================== 

A girl in Karen's year had committed suicide last winter. Karen hadn't been good friends with her but her best friend Krista lived next door to her. Lila Jones' suicide had been the product of bullying - ruthless internet bullying and terrible attacks by the other girls in her year - and Karen had been sent home once from school for fighting a girl (and beating her rather badly) who had been trying to beat the living daylights out of Lila. Krista wasn't much of a fighter but Karen was more than happy to step in. When the news had broke, that Lila had been found dead in the first stall on the right at the school gymnasium's girls toilets, Karen had been much more concerned with helping Krista than touching her own grief. Karen had certainly been affected but had dealt with her grief quietly in her room and on her own time. Lestrade had long ago taken the approach to not barge in on his daughters' problems where he wasn't wanted. He'd attempted to talk to her about it once, she'd assured him that he was fine, and that was that. 

In the wake of Sherlock's very different suicide Lestrade has found himself limited in people to talk to about it. Lestrade isn't exactly one to sit and vent about his problems but he can't talk to John about it so he has found himself talking to Karen about it. It is perhaps a little strange to be getting help from his teenage daughter but his family is far from normal and neither are his daughters. It's also logical since Karen still to this day is walking Krista through the aftermath of Lila's suicide. 

When he gets back from St. Bart's he finds that Karen has not left for work yet. She's on her way from the sitting room to the stairs with two cups of tea in hand. "I gather you don't want to sit on the couch again."

Karen Lestrade was the shortest as well as the youngest of his daughters; she barely reached the top of his shoulder and that made her perfect to hug. She was also the daughter who looked the least like her mother. She had his eyes, his hair - she had recently dyed it black but the thickness was all Lestrade genes - and his mother's face. She had designs on working for Scotland Yard one day and while Lestrade had every faith that she would succeed - she was definitely the most perceptive and logical of the three girls - but in another life she would be a lovely social worker or psychiatrist. Karen has mentioned going to read for psychology at uni next year depending on how her A levels went but Lestrade knows it's only for the sake of having a degree to fall back on in the event that she didn't make it to the Met.

He follows Karen upstairs to her room. As usual the blinds are drawn so it looks like a cave in there thanks to the dark blue walls she'd asked for when she was ten. Because she knows her father hates it, and because she knows what they're going to talk about, she opens the blinds. Lestrade nods his thanks and settles on Karen's bed to sit against the wall. Karen folds herself into the space between his legs and the headboard and sips her tea.

"I thought you worked at one." He observes as he sips his tea.

"Shift got changed. It's five now." She does not say that she switched shifts with another girl to be here for him. Nor does she mention that Louise had told her who was on the phone and why. He chooses not to draw attention to those facts. Karen chooses to delve right into it. "How is he?"

Sherlock and John have become a significant part of Lestrade and his daughters' lives and not just because of the work. Karen is genuinely concerned, not politely, and for all intents and purposes thinks of them as family. She's been mourning Sherlock just as much as he himself has. Lestrade doesn't know if she's tried to talk to John but he doubts she's had any success if she has to ask.

That being said he has to think before he answers. He doesn't think Karen has seen him since the funeral. "The same," he says, finally. "Today was just a bad day." 

“Did you stop him from jumping?” 

“He had no plans to jump. I don’t think he even knows why he was up there in the first place.” 

“Yes he does. He just doesn’t want to tell you.” She sets her mug down on her nightstand and visibly gathers herself. “Lila killed herself in the loo by the gymnasium, the first stall from the door. I cannot tell you the number of times I've found Krista there. She's not actually using the thing, either. She's just sitting there eating her lunch or doing her homework or even listening to music. It’s been over a year now and we still find her there every now and again.”

Lila was buried in the same cemetery as Sherlock was. Lestrade remembers taking Karen to the funeral and he remembers taking a brief stop by the poor girl’s grave on the way from Sherlock’s burial. He supposes it can be helpful or healing to mourn at the scene of the actual death rather than the grave itself. John, he thinks, has only been to Sherlock's grave twice: once for the funeral and one time not too long after with Mrs. Hudson where he'd said his piece. Mrs. Hudson hadn’t overheard and hadn’t asked what he’d said. Whatever John said there was between him and Sherlock’s ghost and there it would stay. Lestrade just hoped that Mycroft didn’t have the grave bugged or anything. He wouldn’t put it past him. He'd check it out later.

“You say you still find her there?”

Karen nods. “I wouldn’t be surprised to keep finding her there when we all go off to uni, or in a stall like it, for a long while yet.”

“Do you worry?”

“She texts me with a picture of what’s in the stall with her. Contents of her bag and pockets included.” 

“What if she’s hiding something?” 

Karen sighs and suppresses a shudder. “She’s not the type and she’s never shown any signs of it but neither did Lila so...keep an eye out, Dad. Watch over him. Sherlock would want you to.”

Where John got along with all of Lestrade's daughters - even Tess and Tess had been absolutely smitten with him when she'd met him - Sherlock got on the best with Karen. Louise was too dull for him and putting Tess and Sherlock alone in the same room was something that Lestrade and the others actively avoided. Sherlock had first met Karen when she'd been eleven and he had been in the process of breaking into their house to find a very specific pen. Karen had called her father, and then the police, but there had been a good period of the two of them alone together where something very strange and special had happened. The two of them functioned on the same wavelength sometimes and when Sherlock and John had come over to the Lestrade household for dinner the first time there had been something passing between Sherlock and Karen that had almost looked like approval sought and approval gained.

“How are you doing?” he finds himself asking in light of this. “I know you were fond of him.” 

“I’m okay,” she nods, quickly. “I mean I’m still sad, of course, but I’m okay. Or will be one day. I don't know. Worry about John, Dad." 

Karen hates being hugged without warning but as he watches tears well in her eyes and sees a flash of grief driven rage there he sets his mug on the floor and then pulls her into his arms without preamble. She is rigid for the first few seconds but then Lestrade tucks her head under his chin. She melts and hugs back.

They stay like that until she has to get ready for work. He kisses her on her forehead, leaves her room, and wonders how in the name of everything anything is ever going to be normal again.

================================================================================= 

Sherlock's grave is covered in mementos. There's flowers (which Sherlock would hate), notes (which Sherlock would hate more but enjoy tearing apart) and a few little tokens from the people who knew him best. It's a select group but the evidence is there. A shock blanket, a riding crop, a mutilated deerstalker, a miniature violin...

Lestrade has a box of nicotine patches. He leaves each time he visits, which is monthly. He's already been this month with Louise to clear the grass and maintain the little bush that Mrs. Hudson and he had planted there shortly after the burial. He'd also come to clean the graffiti and crap off it almost every day. People were so fickle. One day they love him, one day they hate him, then they love him again.

Sherlock may not have cared what people thought of him but he cared. John fucking cared. His daughters fucking cared. 

He takes a look around the gravestone for any of Mycroft's toys and fails to find any. He knows full well that he wouldn't find any if there were any to find but he starts talking anyway. "He's bad, you know. We all are. John's the worst off, though. Not that you're surprised. You had to have known that when you did what you did...or maybe you didn't. I'm not sure considering that phone call."

_I'm a fake._

"You're not a fake and you damn well know it. Knew it, damn it. Why would you do that to him? To the rest of us. You saved us all, don't get me wrong, but was that bit necessary? I know you were supposed to die in disgrace but did you have to throw that parting shot? Did you have to leave him with that?"

He sighs, sets the nicotine patches down, and stands back at the foot of the grave. "You and I both know it's only a matter of time before John leaves and I don't even know why I'm asking what I'm about to ask. I don't really believe in this stuff. Anyway, watch over him would you? I'm doing my best and I'm sure your blasted brother is too, damn him, but we can't be everywhere. Do what you can."

As he walks away he thinks that the best thing Sherlock could do would be to crawl out of that grave. He certainly doesn't believe in that but he looks back anyway. Only the adorned headstone is there.

He would have been surprised to find Sherlock standing there and is more upset than he has any right to find that even Sherlock Holmes cannot beat death.


	3. Chapter Three

John's birthday is the seventh of August. It's a Tuesday and it's a relatively nice day. He's not with John, no one is - he's already talked to Mrs. Hudson twice today. She'd brought him up a bit of cake and he'd thanked her, allowed her a little visit, and then had took it to work with him. Lestrade bets that he's probably sharing it with his coworkers and hasn't drawn any attention to the fact that it's his birthday at all. Last year John had spent his birthday with Sherlock on a case. Lestrade had completely expected Sherlock to forget but late that night he'd ended up meeting the two of them at the Yard's local for a pint and a spot of dinner at Sherlock's invitation. Sherlock had even bought John a gift. Granted it had been a laptop to replace the one that Sherlock had broke but that was a huge thing coming from him. Lestrade has never received a replacement for so much as a pen stolen from him over the years of their acquaintance - not to mention all those stolen IDs. Sherlock had remembered his last birthday though and he'd got him a box of expired nicotine patches. Those had certainly come in use during his relapse period...

He sends John a birthday text message and offers a pint. He does not expect to be taken up on it. At least he will have received something from someone outside of Baker Street. He highly doubts Harry Watson will think to send anything except potentially a very drunken phone call that will certainly end poorly. The girls had bought a card and sent it off last night with their well wishes and an invitation to come to Brighton with them next weekend. Lestrade has no objection to John coming along but he tells the three of them, though he's really talking to Tess, that it's very nice of them but that John will most likely say no.

“Why would he say no?” Tess demands at dinner that night, almost offended. “It’ll be a good vacation for him.”

“That it would but I don’t think he wants a vacation.” 

“He wants to sit here and mope for the rest of his life? That’s stupid!” 

“Tess...” Louise has a growl just like her mother’s - she also is the spitting image of her mother with the exception of her eyes (deep hazel instead of light brown). She's got the auburn hair that isn't quite as thick as her sisters' and has managed to hit Anne's commanding height of nearly two meters. Lestrade wonders how much of her Louise actually does remember. Karen has no memory of her at all and Tess remembers little else but her voice. Louise had been five when Anne had left and she guarded what memories she had. Not out of remembrance but out of determination to forget the woman that abandoned her, her father, and her sisters.

“What?” Tess yelps. Tess seems to be a perfect blend of Lestrade and his ex-wife. Honey brown eyes, light brown hair, and her mother's perfect curves. Anne had been rather pear shaped despite her height and Louise had a good balanced between that and the solid, built, and slight tendencies of the Lestrade side of the family. That was what Karen and Tess had ended up with, much to Tess' chagrin. 

Tess and Louise are still bickering. "It is stupid!" Tess shouts. "He’s got to move on sometime!"

Karen is doing her very best to keep quiet. She’s wearing her hair down today and it's falling all over her face so Lestrade can’t get a look at her. Lestrade has to say that Karen’s black hair suits her now that he's more used to it. Not that he would ever say that in the presence of the other two – Louise refuses to have anything but shampoo and conditioner in her hair and it was an ongoing battle to keep Tess from going platinum blonde.

“He can move on when he likes and how he likes,” Louise is saying now. "It's not for us to judge how he mourns and when he's done with it. Are you done, Tess? Really?"

There's a string of hellfire waiting to be launched at Louise but Tess instead shoves the rest of her spaghetti in her mouth and storms upstairs. Louise and Karen share a glance between them and roll their eyes. "Still guilty." Karen pronounces. "She told me once that I was mad if I thought of Sherlock as one of us. I think she thinks she cursed him somehow."

Lestrade shakes his head and chuckles a little. "Doubt it. It was all him - no help from us."

Louise raises her glass, mutters something that sounds a little bit like a prayer, and then retires to her room. He and Karen clear up the dishes and she leaves for work. A few hours later when Lestrade is watching the news, his phone vibrates with a text message.

**_Thank-you. Thank the girls as well._**

It’s the first text he’s received from John in weeks. Might as well get him while he’s feeling talkative.

**_Want to go for a pint? Mark the day properly and all that?_**

**_Got plans, sorry._**

Lestrade sighs and clutches his phone tight in his hand before managing to text back. **_You’re up there, aren’t you?_** Fifteen minutes later Lestrade is getting his coat when the phone buzzes again. 

**_Just leave me, Greg. I won’t do anything stupid._**

A heartbeat later a few pictures are sent. One is of the view of the London skyline from St. Bart’s. Another is of John sitting on a ledge with what appears to be a bottle of champagne. There are two glasses there and one is empty. The other is still full but it has long stopped frothing.

The phone buzzes once more. **_I won’t do anything stupid. Mycroft will certainly warn you if I do anyway._**

**_That’s not very comforting._**

If you do come up I will do something stupid. That work?

Well when you put it that way...Lestrade sighs and tells him that he’ll stay away.

**_Thank you. I’ll text you tomorrow, okay?_**

I’ll be waiting.

If he were Sherlock Holmes he’d had been up there ages ago. If he were Sherlock Holmes on an off day he’d be up there anyway and would refuse to leave without John even if that meant spending the night up there. Greg Lestrade was not Sherlock Holmes. He never could be and he never wanted to be. 

He wishes he could bring Sherlock back. He wishes it with every fibre of his being and finds himself praying for a miracle as he heads off to bed. 

==================================================================================== 

**_He’s on the roof again. This is the fourth time this week. Do something. MH_**

That text is in his inbox for all of two seconds before one from John comes through. **_I’m up here again and I’m accepting visitors. I even have lunch if you’re hungry._** Lestrade’s stomach growls at the mention of food and he gives his stomach a pointed glare. It growls again.

“You want something, Dad? “ Louise is in the kitchen making what lunch she can out of what’s in the fridge. The four of them are off to Brighton once Karen is off work at half six. Tess is out for coffee with a friend on her first day off in over three weeks and Louise is going in for a quick four hour shift to cover off a sick coworker. No one has bothered doing the shopping.

“It’s fine. I’m going to get lunch with John.” He replies that he’ll be there in the next half hour. 

The knife drops in the sink and slow but eager footsteps patter down the hallway. Louise’s head enters the room before the rest of her does. “Are you? That’s brilliant!” No one but Karen knows about John’s habits of frequenting a certain rooftop and Lestrade has no desire to either expand the network of him, Mycroft, and Karen knowing or wipe that delighted smile and genuine well wishing off Louise Anne Lestrade’s face. “You going to ask him to come with us again?” 

Lestrade had no intention of doing so but he promises that he will. Louise all but bounces back to the kitchen. She could easily be mistaken for Tess if she were a few inches shorter and a few decibels louder. She must have read his mind because on his way off she reminds him to tell John that they’re departing from Kings Cross and are aiming for the 19:05 train. He nods distractedly and heads out.

After a bit of a battle at the gates, his Oyster card refuses to scan properly, he buys two bottles of ginger ale on the way back out to street level. He really was considering buying some beer instead, it wasn’t like anyone would see them up on the roof anyway, but had decided not to push his luck. 

When he gets up to the roof he finds John lying across the ledge with a pair of cheap sunglasses on his face and a cigarette loosely held between two fingers. “You took your time,” is all the acknowledgement Lestrade gets initially. Lestrade's fingers itch at the sight of the lit cigarette. He's been doing well and hasn't had one since John's birthday but he wants one so bad now. John had never seemed the type for smoking - he doesn't even remember John indulging in a cigar when Lewis had passed them along at the Yard when his wife had given birth to twin boys.

John takes one final drag from the cigarette before swinging himself up to a sitting position and tossing the cigarette on the roof. “That was my first cigarette since the night before my first tour.” He crushes the thing out with his foot and sighs. “I smoked during training as a way to get in with the other blokes. I stopped once it ended but I had one last one on my own the night before I was deployed.” Lestrade’s expecting some further story or some explanation but nothing comes. The silence between them as John gets up to bring out the lunch that he’d tucked away under the ledge to his right is strange and awkward. Lestrade asks how John manages to get up here unobserved all the time. In the old days no one would have thought twice about seeing him around the hospital but it was different now.

“The same way you got up today I’d imagine.”

Ask an obvious question and you get an obvious answer. A ghostly snort and a reprimand of ‘moron’ echoes in the wind. He wonders if John hears it too when he flinches slightly as he takes off his sunglasses. Molly Hooper had let him up today and of course she would let John up without question. Molly had dealt with Sherlock’s body but she acted like she had killed him herself. At the funeral she’d hugged John tight and had said that she would do anything for him. John, he remembers, had told her that that wouldn’t be necessary but it seemed he did have one use for her. He wonders what had possessed Molly to let him up the first time. She had to have suspected something. Maybe her reasons for letting him up were the same as his for letting him keep the gun.

Or maybe she wanted John to find something. Moriarty and Sherlock had been up here alone before the former had shot himself to give Sherlock no option but to jump. That had all been on the iPhone as well even though it had taken them awhile to find it. The iPhone that Lestrade can see poking out of John’s pocket. “That’s evidence.”

“So it is,” John agrees. “Case is closed though, isn’t it?” There’s a hint of challenge there but Lestrade doesn’t acknowledge it. If John wants Sherlock’s phone Lestrade is not going to bother with insisting he return it. Besides, he’s not back at work yet.

John hands him a sandwich and Lestrade accepts it gratefully. John in turn accepts the ginger ale and they both sit on the ledge Sherlock had jumped off of. John sits cross legged on it and Lestrade manages to balance himself to his comfort to face John. A few times Lestrade thinks he sees a swish of a black coat or bits of John’s sandwich go missing. When John’s sandwich is gone and Lestrade is just about to eat his last bit he swears he hears Sherlock say John’s name.

Then he realises that he is not imagining it because John is apologizing and fumbling with Sherlock’s phone and his ear buds to shut it off. It’s only when Sherlock’s panicked voice is saying “keep your eyes fixed on me!” that Lestrade realises that John listens to Sherlock’s final words to him on a semi regular basis. Probably every single time he's up here.

John cracks open the ginger ale once the phone is silenced and takes a long drink. He does not deny what has happened or offer any sort of explanation. Lestrade manages to keep any comment silent. Every part of him wants to shake him, to demand why he's putting himself through this, to steal the phone and break it. 

“Keep your eyes fixed on me,” John quotes. “As if I could look anywhere else and he knew that. He knew he’d have my attention so why did he tell me that?”

“To keep you from looking at the snipers.” 

“I didn’t know there were snipers then and I wouldn't have thought there were any. There was something he didn’t want me to notice.”

Lestrade knows where this is going. It’s dangerous territory and a part of him has been expecting something like this. “Don’t, John – “

“The will wasn’t read until the end of July. The thirtieth actually; that’s what I had just left from when Mycroft called you up here the first time. Why the hell was that put off?”

“They probably couldn’t find the blasted thing.”

John makes some violent noise of disagreement and shakes his head. “I knew where it was. We both got proper wills after the pool and we, meaning I, put them in the joint safe deposit box we have for case stuff. I couldn’t really handle it at the time so Mycroft asked me where it was and I told him. So Mycroft held onto it for over a month for what reason?”

John must know the obvious ones. Who knew what Sherlock would write in a will? Lestrade had obviously not been named in it since he had not been there. John probably had had to go on his own and sit in the cramped office of the Holmes’ family solicitor with no one but Mycroft. Lestrade has been in that situation before but with the addition of a detoxing Sherlock who very much wanted to know if there was any chance of getting access to his funds if he died in the process of complying with the terms set by his family. 

“He left me everything.” 

Lestrade nods. “Of course he did.” 

“No I mean everything. _Everything._ ” 

“Everything as in...”

“The Trust, his violin, his case files, his equipment, his wardrobe, the lot. I’m the beneficiary. The sole beneficiary.” Lestrade is having a lot of trouble trying to find the strangeness in this. John is getting frustrated. “It is not a complicated will! It shouldn’t have taken so long. It just makes me wonder.” 

“There’s nothing to wonder.”

John’s eyes are positively wild. “Nothing to wonder? A will that takes six weeks to be read, a final command begging me to watch him closely and then to spread a lie, a man who thoroughly vanishes and then reappears as soon as Sherlock’s phone finally tells us who and what Jim Moriarty was.”

“He died to save you, John.”

“ _I know that_ ,” he snarls. He takes several ragged breaths before he sounds normal. “You keep reminding me like you’re expecting me to forget it. I was there, remember. And something isn’t right. Something isn’t sitting right. It was a mess before but now I think I can see something different. Something....else” His eyes narrow in the sun as if trying to find something hidden in the rays. He shakes his head and then hangs it. Nothing. 

This would be the part where Lestrade would say something encouraging but John is not one of his daughters. “Don’t get yourself caught in ‘what ifs’ or ‘whens’. Just because a situation is strange doesn’t mean that it actually is hiding some deeper meaning. God knows I know how it is.” He studies John and tries to remember if John has heard the story that he’s thinking of telling. “You know that my wife left me when the girls were small but did I, or anyone else, ever tell you how?”

John shakes his head and Lestrade tells him how happy he and Anne Wright had been when they’d been dating. When they’d been married they had been happy but just not quite the same way. Lestrade had thought it different but a different kind of love rather than a warning sign. They’d had Louise together and things had improved. Then Tess had followed two years later and then the rough pregnancy three years after that that had produced Karen. “She’d been handling it well, or so I thought, but I was working a lot. Anne got let go from her job so I was working harder and harder to make things work and keep everyone fed. Thank God for my brother and his wife. They helped us out with the girls a lot. And that’s what I thought they were doing the day she left.” 

Around lunch hour on 24 October 1995 Lestrade had got a call from Anne saying she was dropping the girls off with Brian and Molly Lestrade. She needed to get out of the house and run a few errands. Lestrade had said fine and said to let him know if he needed to pick up them up after work. He’d heard nothing either way so had called Brian himself when he got off duty at ten o’clock that night. “They’re still here," had been the answer. "You want them to spend the night with us so you don’t have to bundle them off into a cab?”

He’d spent the night with his girls at his brother’s house. He’d left a message for Anne but had thought nothing of it when he got a hold of one of her friends saying she’d gone out to the films. The next morning when they’d arrived back there had been no sign of Anne. They’d waited two days before she was listed as a missing person. Two weeks after that Lestrade had received the paper work for a divorce as well as Anne’s renouncement of her parental rights. 

It's all a blur but at the same time it's all so fresh. He remembers everything and nothing. The more he talks the more he remembers the exact colour of the papers in the envelope, the weight of it in his one hand while he has baby Karen cradled in the other arm. He remembers the sickening feeling of knowing that he is now a single father. That he is raising three baby girls alone and that these girls are never going to remember their mother let alone know her.

He shudders with the fear and the anger. Strange. He'd thought it long gone by this point. That was the power of memory he supposes. “I thought it was all a mad dream. I didn’t sign the papers for weeks. Not until I finally realised that she wasn’t coming back. I was angry at her. Angry at her for leaving the girls more than for leaving me.” He laughs. It’s bittersweet. “Funny since Karen and Tess don’t remember her at all and Louise doesn’t even have the clearest recollection of her either. Anyway it got close there. Close enough that Brian and Molly were thinking about adopting them, or at least taking them away until I got myself together. I managed it before it got to that.” 

Complex situation but simple explanation. Anne Wright-Lestrade had not liked her life. Had not enjoyed being a mother and had not enjoyed being a wife. He has not seen or spoken to her since that phone call all those years ago. There was no note and no explanation. His beliefs on the whys and wherefores are equal products of his knowledge of Anne and Sherlock’s deductions. 

“Sherlock found her," there's another memory. Of a younger, frailer Sherlock Holmes holding a red CD out to him. "I think it was some attempt at a thank you after I let him consult full time, once he was off the drugs for good. I was angry at him at first for prying into my life but I figured out what he was trying to do.”

“Did you let him tell you?” John asks, legitimately curious. “I don’t think I would have.” 

“I didn’t. I told him thanks but I had no intention of tracking her down and I asked him to forget about her. I thought about the girls but decided against it. If the girls wanted to know they were welcome to ask and search all they wanted when they were older."

"Have they?"

Lestrade sort of laughs. "The girls all have had their phases in thinking about finding their mother but they’re not reasons of mother daughter bonding. Louise wanted to show her what a mistake she made when she gave us up, wanted to flaunt what she could never get back, and Tess just wanted answers. Neither of them ever actually did anything about it."

“And Karen?”

“Karen has no interest.” Lestrade has to laugh again. “If Anne met any of our daughters again I think Karen would be the one she would have to watch out for if she was silly enough to identify herself to her."

John smirks a little and nods. They sit quietly together for a moment before John breaks the silence with the announcement that he's been offered a book deal. Lestrade is ecstatic. He had seen that fire back in John’s eyes when he’d been speaking about men coming back from the grave and he had been loath to put it out. Here is something constructive that John can channel that fire into. Something both productive and therapeutic. “That’s brilliant, John!” he affectionately punches John’s good shoulder. John is far from enthusiastic. 

“It’s blood money, Greg.”

“Then don’t take the money!” He urges. “Donate it to charity, give to his mother, I don’t care but write! You’ve cleared his name and this will just clinch it. And it may well help you, too.”

John says he’ll think about it. Lestrade gives him forty eight hours before he accepts the offer and he finds him scribbling in notebooks or frantically typing with two fingers. Christ, a novel with two fingers. Louise needs to teach John how to type. 

“Oh right,” Lestrade remembers even though he hadn’t planned to. “Are you sure about Brighton?”

John shakes his head. “You have fun with the girls. You’re back at work on Monday aren’t you?”

“Too right I am. I have some team members to deal with, probably sixty days worth of paper work, and who knows what cases will drop on me the second I walk in.” He pauses and shifts his feet awkwardly. “Will you come if I call? It will be legitimate this time, will have to be. You'll probably get paperwork and ID and everything but no one is going to say anything of it. Not after all that and not if I have anything to say about it.”

“I don’t know...”

“Think about it, okay?”

John promises that he will. Lestrade thinks that he’s already made up his mind; he just wishes he knew what it was.


	4. Chapter Four

When Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade returns to work it is treated as if nothing had gone wrong. Mostly, anyway. It's all the usual run of things when he gets in but when he actually sets foot into the office proper he's either treated as if nothing has happened or else the people that know him well - in this case it's Paul Dimmock and few of the others (Stacy Hopkins, Peter Jones, Lloyd Bradstreet, and Donna Lander to name names) - greet him with coffee and muffins and a lot of back slapping.

Then he gets to his desk and finds there is actually sixty days of worth of paperwork sitting on it but most of it is sorted. He's barely sat down when a light knock on his door draws attention to the fact that Dave Anderson is standing in his doorway. So is Sally Donovan. 

"Welcome back," Dave says. It's sincere and awkward. Sally nods her agreement and eventually echoes verbatim.

Lestrade has had fantasies about this moment. Most involve him yelling and tossing them out of his office and off his team, some involve throwing them out a window, and others involve him marching both of them to 221b Baker Street and having them actually face John. Mrs. Hudson hasn't told him if either Donovan or Anderson have gone to see John. Neither of them were at the funeral but Lestrade wants them to see what their lack of trust has resulted in.

Then again he is just as much to blame. And, as John says, they could play the blame game all day and really the end fact was that they had done their job. At great personal expense since, really, Sally especially, they could have been suspended or fired or had any manner of hellfire rained down on them as a result of their complacency.

"Come in," he eventually says. "Shut the door behind you."

Donovan does so. Neither of them take the seats in front of the desk. They stand there, privates ready to take orders.

"I understand why you did what you did," he begins. "I understand why you thought what you thought. I don't believe you treated Sherlock fairly, either of you, from day one and I think you can admit that now. Yes he was abrasive and rude and all that but he did good work for us and you threw him overboard at the first hint of doubt. He was one of us and you betrayed him."

It's a testament to both of them that no one says anything. Lestrade goes on. "You did right, you know. As much as I hate it you did right." He's speaking directly at Donovan at this point. "I am not going to hold it against you. We all know Sherlock wouldn't - he'd probably commend you both for using your heads for once. The truth is out there for all to see now and there is far too much blame to be passed around here for one person to own it all." He stands. "We have work to do and it's going to be all that much harder without him to help us out. We need to put this behind us and get on with the good fight, okay?" 

They both nod but no relief colours their faces. "How is John?" 

Lestrade may have just given a speech about moving on and putting the betrayal behind them but this was different. He shows no mercy. "Terrible. Next stupid question, please?" 

"Will he help us from time to time?" Donovan's question is more tentative and resigned. Lestrade sighs. 

"Would you?" 

Neither of them have any answers. Lestrade changes the topic by thanking them for sorting his paper work. "Now what have you got on now and what needs to be looked at again? I made a point to not look too much at anything during my forced vacation." 

Donovan produces a folder, Anderson another, and they finally take the seats. 

===================================================================================== 

The meeting with Superintendant Gregson goes better than expected. It's as awkward as all hell but it's fine. He assures Lestrade that his record will not suffer and that he's more than welcome to take on consultants as long as proper channels are followed. John Watson's name is not mentioned but it hangs between them like a death sentence. "We'll see how things go," is all he commits to and Gregson lets him leave after that. 

An email from Mycroft assures him that things will go very smoothly for him from now on. Lestrade has an email half composed demanding as to what the hell Mycroft is playing at but decides he doesn't want to know. 

Then he gets a call about a murder at Mornington Crescent Station. He can't make head or tail of it and neither can the rest of his team. Anderson is shocked speechless and Sally keeps shooting down her own theories as she spouts them. Lestrade realises halfway through the act that he has selected Sherlock's number in his contact list and was just about to hit call. He looks at the screen, dejected for a moment, and scrolls up to select 'John Watson.' 

"Might as well try," one of the newer recruits says.

Fair enough. He pushes call. After the second ring it occurs to him that John is on days today at the A&E. Just like the old days, however, he answers anyway. "Yeah?" 

"Hi John, it's Greg." 

"I know. First day back going well?" 

"Enough, yeah. Look...we've got a real mess here. Double homicide at Mornington Crescent. Could go with an extra set of eyes and another brain."

It's a long, pregnant pause before John gives a cautious yes. The entire team breathes a sigh of relief along with Lestrade. Everyone knows this doesn't solve everything - for the murder or for the Yard - but it's a step in the right direction. 

When John gets on scene it's even more awkward than Lestrade's meeting with Gregson had been. He's waiting for the earth to split when John shakes hands with both Donovan and Anderson without causing serious injury to either of them. Lestrade's not sure whether he's to mark that up to John's doctor side or his soldier side. Maybe both. Maybe it's just that he just doesn't want to bugger up Lestrade's first day back. Either way he decides that he owes John dinner after this.

John does see a few things that they missed. He notices that the first victim's fingers have been broken on purpose - Anderson had initially said that it had been done by accident. He also finds the mobiles of both victims. One was in their left sock and another in the inside pocket of a money belt. It turns out that victim is a tourist. There's a whole sea of information that just pops up as John gets on a roll before suddenly realising where he is and who he is not with before stepping back and letting 'the professionals' as he calls them do their work. 

Lestrade isn't sure if the others noticed the little flicks of John's eyes to his left. Not straight left. Slightly up a bit as if he was looking to meet someone's eyes. Lestrade doesn't think it's possible for his heart to break any more than it already has but he can bloody hear it shatter in him. 

Sherlock's ghost dogs them the rest of the day. It's not a threatening presence. Just a lingering absence that Lestrade knows he is going to feel forever and a day. Somewhere in this quiet he hopes Sherlock is saying 'well done, John'. 

John eventually does excuse himself from the scene. "I've got to get back," he lies. "Things to do. People to stitch up. All that." His hand shakes but Lestrade pretends not to notice. He thanks him for what track he set them on and the rest of the team goes about their business. 

Sherlock's ghost continues to haunt them and now it's threatening. He knows he's not the only one who can feel the spectre breathing down his neck, urging them on toward whatever the answer is. It's all beyond them, at least for now, but Lestrade has confidence that they'll get there soon. "We'd be going faster if you hadn't jumped, you mad bastard."

It's quiet after that and Lestrade almost apologizes to thin air. All of his girls are on nights tonight so he sends out his offer of dinner to John. He extends the offer to the girls on the off chance that they get off early as a courtesy. He knows no one will take him up on it. He's pleasantly surprised, and also a touch worried, when John accepts the invitation. That sense of worry does not disappear when John eventually walks into the Yard's local and settles into a seat. "All right?" he asks. 

John shrugs. "Long day," he sighs. 

"Thank you for coming out again. I know you really didn't want to."

"I had to," John deflects. "I'm writing a book aren't I?" He sighs and takes a sip of his beer, cautiously. 

"And usually one is meant to withdraw from society at large when they're writing, yeah?"

"Usually," John agrees. "I think we both know how much of a bad idea that is." 

"Quite a thing to hear you admit it, John." He doesn't mean to say that aloud but John nods agreement and pulls out a notepad. "Been trying to think of some things. Finer details and that. I need a little bit more than what's in the blog." 

John has written up a handful of cases, nine or ten Lestrade thinks, but it would probably nice to have it an bigger number. There is one very obvious case to write up but Lestrade isn't going to say it. He'd like to read some other ones, or see John's interpretation of some other ones. "I can give you some early ones," he offers. "The ones before you, I mean, if you want to. The first one that Sherlock and I ever did together was quite...well, quite..."

"What?" 

"It's a story of cocaine, murder, sacrilege, and international espionage and I was damned sure I could do it on my own. He proved me very, very wrong." 

"Care to share?" 

"Not in public. I feel like if someone from the Yard overhears I'll be arrested on the spot." He believes nothing of the kind, emails from Mycroft Holmes notwithstanding, but wants to see if John will take the bait and forget his sorrows for awhile. Just think back and remember his friend before things went mad.

Well, maybe not before things went mad. Things were always mad. 

John asks if they can get takeaway instead. Lestrade offers his house. Despite what he's trying to accomplish here the thought of setting foot in Baker Street makes him far from comfortable. He also feels like he needs to wait until John actually invites him. He doesn't want to know what John would say so he's quick to offer his house and John does not counter offer. 

"Sacrilege?" John asks. "Honestly?" 

"Are you really that surprised?"

John's laugh almost sounds full. "No, I suppose not," he chuckles. His smile, that loving lost smile is real enough and Lestrade returns it even as his shattered heart shatters some more. 

===================================================================================== 

Lestrade has finished his tale and is making mental notes to himself to go looking things up in the archives when Tess stumbles home. A young beat cop would mistake her as drunk but Lestrade knows she's just beat tired. This latest production has been highly technical and features an absolutely mental direction and a loose cannon for an assistant director. She's got one week left with this one, he thinks, until a nice Shakespeare play starts up next. "All right?" he asks as she stumbles past them into the kitchen.

"Just fine," she slurs as she sticks her head back in. They focus more when she sees that Lestrade has company. "Oh hello, John!" 

John takes advantage of the fact that he only has to deal with Tess at under twenty-five percent functionality. "Hello, Tess," he smiles back. "How have you been?" 

She waves one hand back and forth. "All right, I guess. You?" 

"Well enough." 

Tess isn't one to pick up subtleties all that well and her current state certainly does not make her better at it. "That's fab," she decides. "Just fab." The last 'fab' vanishes in a yawn but the point is there. "Get back on the horse and all that." 

John hums, non committal. Tess continues her plod into the kitchen. On her way back up the stairs with a mug of tea she pops her head back in again. "You'll be fine, John," she assures him. "It'll all work out in the end." Lestrade raises an eyebrow and John manages to keep a straight face, and keep on the couch. Tess somehow makes it upstairs without spilling tea all over herself and Lestrade waits to hear her door click closed before speaking. 

"Sorry about her." 

John shakes his head. "Not at all." He finishes his own cup of tea and stands up. "Probably should head off myself. I'm on night rotation the next two weeks." 

"Quit the locum work then?" 

John nods. "Need something to hold my attention. A&E at the very least manages to do that more than the locum work does. Less than...before but...well, that was then and this is now." He sounds like a man informing his friends he's been diagnosed with terminal cancer (again that thought about John's grief being a cancer) or else that he's about to go to prison for the next twenty years. 

"How did it feel today?" Lestrade had meant to save this question for another day but it's too late to take it back now. John is taken aback by the question, it seems he'd expected Lestrade to keep it to himself as well. He ponders deeply for a moment and then shrugs. 

"I don't know," he decides. "I didn't like it but I didn't not like it either." 

"Will you come again tomorrow if I need you?" 

John nods. "Most likely." He fails at putting on a brave face. "Thanks for tonight, Greg." 

"Anytime, John. I mean it." 

As John opens the front door he almost bowls into Karen, or Karen almost bowls into him. The two of them face each other in silence for a moment and John is about to finally say hello when Karen pulls him into a hug. She whispers something fiercely in his ear, kisses his cheek, and rushes upstairs. John follows her up with his eyes and her door closes with much more intent than Tess' had. John keeps looking up for a few more moments as if he's waiting for her to come back out and then takes his leave. 

As Lestrade is getting ready to go to bed himself he can smell cigarette smoke coming from Karen's room. Karen thinks she's been keeping this a secret since Sherlock died and Lestrade has been content to let it go on. Mostly because of what he's about to do now. 

He knocks on the door while he's opening it and finds her perched on her bed, fan blowing out the open window in an effort to clear the smoke. She's only just lit up and again there are tears on her face. 

Lestrade sits down next to her and asks for one. Her eyes widen and she freezes like a deer in headlights. "You either give me one or I give you a talking to about the evils of cigarette smoking."

She gives him the cigarette and even lights it for him. It tastes weird at first but then his body remembers and he relaxes for the first time all day. 

"Will it ever stop, Dad?" his youngest asks him. 

Lestrade does not have an answer for her. He doubts that he ever will. 

===================================================================================== 

They solve the case two days later. It's two days too late since the murderer has managed to hang himself in the meantime. John vanishes before the note is read and Lestrade's mobile starts chirping at him with texts informing him that John is on the roof again. 

Lestrade sees no reason to go get him. Not today. Part of him fears for John's life but he knows he won't jump. Not while he's got a book to write. Not while he's doing this one last thing for Sherlock. 

When he finishes giving his reports at work he starts collecting every case that isn't under lock and key that he ever worked with Sherlock before John had come into their lives. The more material John has the more work he'll have to do and the longer it will take to complete his mission. 

That's Lestrade's mission: keep the man involved, thinking, and moving because when John stops long enough and spends enough time on that blasted roof then...then that might be it for everything.

Sherlock had died to save John and Lestrade was going to do as best he could to make sure that Sherlock's sacrifice bought John as much time as he could. Hell, if Sherlock's ghost couldn't get off its arse and get work done he'd just have to do it himself.


	5. Chapter Five

The next few months blow by. They tumble through Lestrade's reckoning like leaves in the wind and before he knows it it's damn near Christmas. Louise is working hard to complete her teaching degree at home and he still hasn't got final word from Tess as to when precisely she will be back from Belfast. It's her last year of Drama at Queen's and she is planning on taking her Masters year so she is putting far more work into it than he would expect of her. Karen, who is in sixth form now, is throwing herself into anything and everything. Unlike her sisters she has never found one subject that she shines in. She does well enough in everything there's nothing she's known for like Tess is known for Drama and Louise is known for History and Biology. The A levels are going to be terrible for her and Lestrade has every intention of seeing her through those as much as possible. He was much like her - jack of all trades and master of none - and so worried about where to place the most emphasis when it came to studying.

Life at the Yard is back to normal. His hackles don't rise when certain coworkers enter his presence, Anderson and Donovan do not hesitate before entering his office, and no one has said anything about Sherlock Holmes to his face in months. In fact it's almost terrifying how no one even refers to him when old cases are brought up. The only sign that Sherlock was ever a part of them, however unofficially, is the tattered newspaper clipping in the break room from when the whole story had come out. Lestrade hadn't put it up there as he'd been on suspension at the time and he has no idea who to thank for that. Could be Dimmock, could be Hopkins, could even be Donovan or Anderson. Who knew. It was good to see that he still haunted the Met like he'd always done in life. 

Sherlock Holmes still haunted crime scenes though. If anything the feeling from the Mornington Crescent Murders has intensified. He thinks he sees the coat out of the corner of his eye, swears he hears the flutter of the scarf as it's tossed aside in a fit, and for certain hears huffs and groans and eye rolling and flat out demands that they move faster and how can they be so slow and dull and _oh so stupid!_

He wonders if this is what John's life has become. Ghosts in the flat, on the street, and probably in every single cab in London as well. John may live at 221b still but he will not take a cab. It's tube, bus, or walk and that is it. No negotiations. 

John still can be found on the roof every once in awhile. Sometimes he's writing up there, sometimes he's eating his lunch, and once there was this horrible time where Mycroft sent him a video clip - this was before John smashed the cameras - of John standing Sherlock-style on the edge, arms out and ready to swan dive off. 

There hadn't been any intent to jump off there. Lestrade keeps telling himself that no matter how much Mycroft screeches about how much of a threat this roof is to John and how John is clearly going to jump off the thing any day now John said he never would jump off a building. Not certain enough he'd said. John's word is his bond and Lestrade has to rely on that for his own sanity. He still entertains stealing John's gun - he knows John's schedule like the back of his hand now - or else having him arrested but he also remembers that John had said he'd never do that to Mrs. Hudson. Doesn't mean he'd not take the gun elsewhere and get the job done alone and far from anyone who cared about him. 

Despite all these thoughts bouncing around Lestrade's usually overwrought skull John is as safe as he's going to be until the book is done. The man is busy. When he's not working maximum hours at A &E he's at crime scenes with Lestrade. He's still finding his footing and his place in this post-Sherlock dynamic and is still only politely civil to Donovan and Anderson but he comes whenever Lestrade calls so long as no one at the hospital needs his immediate attention. When he's not doing either of those he's writing or working out. The first time he had to run on a case he'd found himself winded and had decided that he needed to get back into a regular regime. With Sherlock he'd run almost hourly, or so it seems to Lestrade, and mourning, to quote John, was "not really a healthy pastime." 

The mourning is there always, Lestrade can see it behind his eyes and his haunting his movements even in the moments where John forgets what he's lost. Or at least seems to forget because, let's be honest here, if Sherlock Holmes is a ghost and is haunting anyone or anything it is John Hamish Watson. John could not care less about that.

The book seems to be going well enough. Lestrade sneaks in copies of old cases and his own notes on them while John tries to put Sherlock's famous index into some form of workable format for him to use. He's decided he's going to transfer these copious notebooks, chicken scratch notes and all, onto the computer. It's amazing, really, how a man like Sherlock had kept an evolving index in notebooks on not in a Word file. The task is daunting and John refuses any help aside from Louise's gentle keyboarding help. The man can actually type fifty words a minute now.

At some point John mentions that it's probably a poor idea for Lestrade to be so free with case notes with him. "Official consultant status notwithstanding, it's probably dangerous for you isn't it?"

Dangerous is a word he misses. The state of his job is very rarely dangerous anymore aside from the usual risks a Detective Inspector faces but danger left his life the same time it left John's. Part of slipping John the files is dancing with as close to dangerous as he can without inflicting any actual danger on himself and really, and this is what he tells John, he could do all sorts of things and get away with it now if he was the man to take advantage of that sort of thing. Everyone feels badly, and rightly so, and everyone would certainly volunteer the information to John if he were to ask himself to avoid the Yard, or anyone in particular, being the villain in the stories he is writing. 

John chuckles at that. A little less rusty than it has been but still not quite the manic giggle that Lestrade use to hear at all sorts of inappropriate moments. "No need to worry about that. There's only one real villain to concern ourselves with." 

On 15 December, the first day of everyone's semester break, John knocks on the door bringing lunch for the whole family (care of him and Mrs. Hudson) and four copies of what he is calling his first draft. "It sort of is and sort of isn't," he explains as Karen rushes to take the parcels from his arms and out of Tess's reach. Tess has been drooling for something home cooked in the wake of a particularly brutal final week of term. "There's a bit missing but I haven't quite sorted it out enough in my own head." Lestrade knows without asking that the missing but is the final story. The Fall in all its glory. Part of him is proud that John intends to write it while the rest fears for what will remain when that is torn out of his heart and onto paper.

He's already submitted it to his editor but Louise's copy has a bright pink post-it note tacked to it. "Be ruthless," he asks her. It takes every bit of politeness in Lestrade's eldest girl to not rush upstairs to grab a red pen and attack it right then and there but she takes the papers and promises that she will. 

Tess has already started reading it and it takes a bit to pull her out of it. "I don't remember any of this!" she whines to her father. The story she's reading is the first case that Lestrade ever worked with Sherlock on - the one involving sacrilege. He trusts John to have heavily edited this one. 

"I'd hope not," Lestrade snorts. "It took a lot to keep that thing quiet and I don't want you going asking John questions or trying to figure out anything past what's in there." 

Tess grumbles her assent and goes back to it until Louise snatches it out her sister's hands. "We have company," she reminds her, primly. There's a bit more browbeating once Karen bellows for a bit of help in the kitchen and Louise literally hauls Tess into the kitchen. "We'll call you when it's all set up."

Lestrade rolls his eyes at the way the girls tiptoe around them, as if they're leaving him alone with a girlfriend or something. John smirks at him. "They usually this helpful?"

"Sometimes." He has to give them some credit. 

John is staring at Lestrade's hands. "You plan on putting that down anytime soon?" 

When he looks down he sees that his hands are around John's book like a vice. He wills his fingers to loosen and sets it beside Louise's copy. "Why us?" he asks.

"I want to see what the general public thinks." 

"We're not exactly the general public, John." 

John concedes the point. "I don't really care what the general public thinks. I want the people that matter to get a first look at it."

Lestrade is touched and before the thought can even materialize in his head John's hand is on his shoulder. "It wasn't your fault," he promises him. "Moriarty had everything planned. Everything would have fallen apart no matter what you did."

He still can't quite admit that it was out of his hands. It's one thing to think it and rationalize it to yourself day after day but another to actually say it, know it to be true, and believe it. "One day I'll believe it," he assures him. "But, as usual, I'm glad to hear that you don't think it's my fault." 

"Not just me, mate. He would have said the same. His notes say as much too." 

John still can't say his name. It's been six months but Lestrade can count on one hand the number of times that John has said Sherlock's name in his presence. "They helping?" There are many levels of questioning there. John sees it as Lestrade had known he would and chooses his words carefully.

"Enough," is what he decides on. He reaches for Louise's copy, flips to the last page, and shows him a title but with no text.

15\. THE REICHENBACH FALL 

"The book is meant to be published in March," he goes on. "I have, I assume, until early February to write this." He shakes his head at the page when he turns it back to him. "It's not even the actual reliving of everything that scares me, I relive it every bloody day, it's the writing. Writing it down is admitting it. Writing it down is officially saying he's dead and that this is The End and that this is what I'm left with."

It's usually sort of nice hearing that your fears are confirmed (you were right and not mad) but Lestrade really could have done without having his confirmed. "When it's done you do what I told you before: you find someone when it becomes unbearable, you keep busy, you keep involved...you seen anyone recently?" 

John rolls his eyes. At Lestrade's raised eyebrow John asks him to remind him about a blind date that Harry had tricked him into last month. "Worst date ever," he assures him. "Nothing worth mentioning."

"That's no reason to not try again."

"I don't think I'm meant for it." 

Lestrade raises his eyebrow again at that idiotic remark but John doesn't say anything. Before anyone can have any more deep thoughts on the subject Tess announces that dinner is served. The meal is a quiet but enjoyable affair. It almost feels like Christmas dinner what with everyone being on their best behaviour. At meal's end, after many thank yous from the Lestrade family and many not at alls from John, Lestrade decides what he and John should do next.

"You doing anything tonight?" 

"You know full well that I don't work evenings again until next rotation." 

"It's the 15th." 

"I know." This is both saying that he knows today's date and the significance behind it. 

"I didn't go up this month - that whole runaway bride thing was a bit mad and I forgot. You feel up to it?" The question at the end was stupid; of course John wasn't up to it but he had to ask.

John sighs and rubs his eyes. "I can't remember the last time I've gone up." 

John sounds too guilty. Lestrade rises and clasps his friend's shoulder. "He's probably cranky and bored out of his mind then." 

"Stupid bastard shouldn't have offed himself then. Or should have let me get shot and then he'd have company." 

Lestrade nearly falls over but decides to pretend he hadn't heard that. It could well have been a joke and he remembers what John had told him on the roof about suicide. Remembers that John's word is his bond. "Let's go." 

It takes a few moments but John nods his head and gets up. 

===================================================================================== 

Lestrade decides to take the car to the cemetery. It's more personal and he knows that traffic will slow them down. John, and himself he has to admit, don't need to be thrown into the rush and be there instantly. Or what will feel like instantly.

He also needs to stop to pick up something. When he pulls up in front of a Boots John raises an eyebrow at him. "Need to grab something first." When he returns with Sherlock's preferred brand of nicotine patches John raises an amused eyebrow. "What? It's tradition!"

He almost doesn't hear John ask to detour at Baker Street. Lestrade doesn't offer to come up with him and John doesn't offer. Now's not the time to deal with that issue. When John comes back down he's got a cane with him. It takes Lestrade longer than it should to remember that when he'd first met John he'd been using a cane. He'd only seen the cane the once, in Brixton, and then he'd never seen it again. Except, he remembers, one time at Baker Street after Sherlock had taken a bad tumble down a fire escape and was using it to limp about the flat. 

Lestrade decides not to ask about that either. He also decides to leave the radio alone during the silent drive. It's a horrible silence but it's one that must be endured.

Sherlock's grave is lonely while still being covered in what mementoes survived the original hype. Lestrade can see remains of newspapers, deerstalkers, and his own last few boxes of nicotine patches. A perfectly maintained shock blanket and a pristine plastic skull cause Lestrade to fall to his knees and start frantically checking the headstone for bugs. John takes on the back and even investigates the tree and nearby graves. Lestrade warns John as he starts toeing at the dirt that just because he's covered up desecration once doesn't mean he's quite willing to do it again so newly back from suspension. John stops toeing at Margery Petersen's grave and comes back over to Sherlock's. 

No matter how many times Lestrade sees this headstone it will never stop being dramatic and ornate. As ornate as a black marble slab bearing only Sherlock's given and surname - John says he knows Sherlock's middle name but it will go to grave with him because that's what he promised Sherlock - and dates can be. There is of course no phrase or even a "Rest in Peace."

"Here you go mate," he grunts out as he rummages for the nicotine patches and perches them on the headstone. "Know you always could use some more. " These conversations don't feel as stupid when he's alone but now that he has company he feels like he's talking to an imaginary friend. "There." He looks back at John.

John is twirling the cane between his hands with a deftness that surprises Lestrade. He does some ridiculous flip with it that Lestrade is certain should have decapitated him and catches it again. "That'll be ten quid, thanks," he says to an imagined audience. He leans the cane against the headstone. "Never had much use for it since I've met you. I never properly thanked you for that, did I?" John shrugs, just as awkward as Lestrade is then. "Thanks."

"John's writing a book," Lestrade jumps in right away. If there's more than a pause for breath here he doesn't know what is going to happen. "He's publishing the blog with a few other things. I told him about the Carfax case too. That's all out in the open now. Heavily, heavily edited of course but there. Got a title, John?" 

"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," he mumbles.

They both tense and look at each other. "Did you hear that?" Lestrade asks.

"What did you hear?"

_"Boring!"_

"I heard ' _dull!' "_

Shared aural hallucinations. That was always a good sign. "Logical enough of a choice. Why not put your name in it?"

John shakes his head. "Too long. Thought about calling it the Casebook of Sherlock Holmes instead."

"Glad you went with Adventures." The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes made it sound like Sherlock himself had written them. It also made it sounds like a collection of reports instead of the tales that they were. Cases turned into tales. Sherlock would have griped loudly about it but would have a secret copy he'd read whenever he knew for sure no one was watching. 

"I'll read you what I've got next time," John says to the headstone. "Everyone else has got a look. Only fair that you do to." 

Lestrade nods and lets the silence happen. There is no replacing this kind of friendship when you lose it and especially not in this way. John needs to deal with that here, in this place, on his own. Lestrade can help as much as he can but it will be John who has to decide to pull himself out of it. To reach out and go forth. As usual, Lestrade knows that is asking far too much of John in light of what he had and what he's lost but it is what it is. The same can be said for himself too.

Lestrade's relationship with Sherlock has always been more paternal than anything else. He's not old enough to be Sherlock's father but that's the way things have always operated between them. He's watch Sherlock grow from near nothing to this and he is always going to mourn what could have been, what had been started with John. He wanted to see how that would properly end, not how it did end. 

This is one of those days where Lestrade feels like nothing will ever right itself. Lestrade will always hurt and blame himself, John will for far longer than he will, and it is what it is. This is what they have left. It isn't ideal and it isn't what was promised but here they are. 

Lestrade lets out a sigh. "Need me to leave you alone with him?" 

"You first," John says as he backs away. "I'll go after." 

This is what they should have done in the first place. The roof was where they shared their grief. Here, in front of the remains of the man, they could only stand alone as if they were meeting a priest for confession. Or stealing a moment to talk with God. 

Lestrade doesn't say anything. He hangs his head and stands as if in silent prayer for a few moments before switching spots with John. Lestrade can hear John's voice but he puts everything he has into not listening in. Not even when he can hear hitching and what sounds like tears in John's voice.

Six months. Jesus Christ was that all? 

When John comes back he looks normal and Lestrade doesn't say anything. When he turns on the radio in the car it's U2 singing "Baby Please Come Home" and he shuts it off with a viciousness he hadn't known he could feel for a piece of music. He does not look at John. 

"What are your plans for Christmas?" he asks when he's pulled up in front of Baker Street. 

John shrugs. "None. I expect Harry to invite me to hers and I have every intention of declining."

"The girls and I are going to spend Christmas in Brighton," he begins. "Brian and Molly have a place up there they usually go to but they're going to see Molly's parents in Dover this year. Care to come along?"

John says he'll think about it. Lestrade says the answer is yes and he'll throw him onto that train unconscious if he has to. "You need out London for a bit. Even if it's just for a few days. We all do."

John huffs. "That's putting it lightly." He looks up at Baker Street like it's a prison. Or like he's looking for someone. "I think I'll come along conscious if it's all the same. I'll check my shifts tomorrow." 

"I'll email you the details when I get home." 

"Good." They say goodbye without extending any thanks or your welcomes. It's implied but also unnecessary. 

When Lestrade gets home he makes himself some tea and settles in front of the telly with whatever Christmas film is being broadcast tonight. He rolls his eyes when "It's a Wonderful Life" comes on but does not change the channel. 


	6. Chapter Six

The Christmas Gala has been a regular thorn in Lestrade's side since he'd joined the force. Despite his position he is not a man for finery. His dress uniform has only been worn a handful of occasions and when Karen has jokingly asked if he'd wear the uniform on her wedding day and he has done his very best to avoid answering the question. Karen has a longer memory than he does though and he's certain that she'll play like he'd agreed and he'd have no choice but to put the damn thing on when the day comes.

He has one good place he goes to get a decent tuxedo for the this occasion and he's fairly sure he gets the same one each year. In the days when Anne had gone with him she'd always seemed to come up with a different, stunning, dress every year. The last Christmas he'd had with her she'd been two months pregnant with Karen and had been utterly miserable. The whole pregnancy had been an utter chore and tax on Anne's health to the point that she'd spent the last stretch of it on complete bed rest. That Christmas had probably been the last time they'd done anything as a couple. It was the last time he remembered seeing Anne smile too. 

After Anne he'd forgone going. He'd had young children to look after, of course. When he'd been promoted he'd started going again. He went alone as a general rule though he has brought Louise and Tess before. Karen had begged to be allowed to come this Christmas but he'd held firm. He hadn't allowed Louise or Tess their invitation until they'd finished sixth form, it was far less odd to him to have uni aged girls with him, and he told Karen that her career goals did not make her exempt. He did agree to promise that he would take her next Christmas. 

The real reason he didn't want a date this year was because he wanted to be available for John. This was his second time attending the Gala and his first time without having to worry about making sure Sherlock didn't set the Christmas tree on fire or burn too many bridges at the Yard. Not that he'd done too much last Christmas. Sherlock had mostly behaved himself, probably because he was still brooding over the Adler woman, and John had decided this was a good time to relax and take full advantage of the open bar. Not to excess mind but enough that his laughter and jubilance had pulled Sherlock out of his strop and into the festivities as much as man like him was able. 

Lestrade smiles and straightens his tie. He knows well enough not expect last year's Gala at this one but he could hope. Christmas was the season of hope after all.

John is also in a tuxedo and it is one that he recognizes. It's the one that Sherlock had had tailored for him for a case at the Birthday Honours. He doesn't think John has had an occasion to wear it since but John is too practical a man to let a nice bit of work go to waste like that. He's got a glass of scotch in his hand and he's talking quietly with Donovan. Lestrade decides not to announce his presence. He eventually feels too much like a policeman supervising a visitation and finds Dimmock. 

"Bit late aren't we?" Dimmock observes. 

"Couldn't find my cufflinks." He only wore the bloody things at the Christmas Gala so how the hell had they ended up upstairs with Tess's theatre supplies was a mystery. Dimmock pours him a drink and he accepts. "How's he doing?"

"Been here for about ten minutes and no issue. A few heads turned when he came in and kept eye on him for a few seconds but went back to their drinks. Situation normal I'd say." 

Lestrade huffs. Situation normal was so far away from them that there was no way of ever going back to it and everyone knew it. He drinks the drink and turns the conversation to how Dimmock plans to celebrate the holidays (quiet day in. His wife is ill and son number one is coming down with it too. It's up to him and son number two to get the turkey and everything sorted). "Here's hoping I don't burn the house down. Or the whole street for that matter." 

"You only melted the microwave the once." 

"Thanks for remembering that. I keep getting blamed for the other one as well." 

"Don't see how since Sherlock said he was doing us a favour when he blew that one up. Old model, inadequate wiring, or some other rot." The smell of that first microwave's demise could still be smelt in the break room. 

"You talking about that time he blew up the microwave?" Donovan and John have drifted their way and Anderson is hovering on the sidelines like an over grown Gollum. Lestrade rolls his eyes and waves him forward. It's Christmas and it's been six months and they should all be able to handle themselves like god damned adults over this. As if in deference to John the conversation changes back into something decisively not Sherlock related and it is when Anderson is trying to solicit ideas as to what to get his brother for Christmas that someone tries to take a shot at John and fails amazingly. 

It should have been an easy shot. It's a gathering of police officers, yes, but police officers on off time and no one is expecting for someone to attack the Christmas Gala. There was security coming in after all and there literally was no way anyone from outside could get in without going through security. The venue didn't even have any windows. John sidesteps as easy as anything and throws himself over Lestrade, which also knocks the rest of the group to the floor. It's a soldier's order of "get down!" that travels through the room like a shockwave and everyone springs into action. This may be a room full of police officers that are off duty but they are police officers. 

John takes in the room, draws his gun, and rushes the attacker all within the blink of an eye. Lestrade gives a single distracted thought as he gets all the civilians invited away from the action to how the hell John had managed to get a gun past security while the rest of him is petrified that John is going to get killed. He doesn't think John had even thought before he'd rushed in there.

It's hard to imagine John on the battlefield. He's seen the photographs, heard the stories, and trusts Sherlock's deductions. It's quite another to see the flashes of the solider that he'd been when he's wearing jeans and jumper. It's also another to see the same sort of physicality when Captain Watson is participating in fisticuffs whilst wearing a tuxedo. The brute is disarmed and is John is trying to literally wrestle information out of him.

"Who sent you?" he barks.

"Wouldn't you like to know," the man sing songs. John almost punches him but Lestrade shouts at him not to. The man grins. "No one sent me really, just don't like to leave a job undone, me."

"What job?"

"May take me a few months to carry it out but I get my job done." John really does not take kindly to that last bit. He breaks the man's wrist as he bats the escaped hand away from a knife and asks, much more rudely, what job he's on about.

A shot rings out, the man goes limp, and Lestrade watches as some stereotypical men in black saunter into the room. "We'll take it from here," they say by way of an order. 

"Like hell you will," Lestrade informs them. He's barely got his name out when the head Man in Black says that they're here on Mycroft Holmes' orders and that he apologizes for the interference. "You're more than welcome to call on him tomorrow. There will be a report and paperwork sent to you and Superintendant Gregson tomorrow. No effort is needed on your parts." He nods, wishes them happy Christmas and the team vanishes.

Both him and John are too stunned to insist on explanations that very second. Once the area is secured and everything seems to be in order Lestrades says that they might as well continue the party. "I think it's out of our hands either way," is his reasoning. "Might as well get on with it."

John shrugs and Lestrade watches curiously as a life and fire that has been absent from John's eyes of late fades away again as he tucks the gun away into his suit jacket. "How the hell does it hide so well.?" he has to ask. Lestrade can't see any sign of an outline or any indicator that John has anything under that jacket but himself. 

John smirks. Lestrade gets it. "Sherlock had this tailored. Right, should have thought more on that one." 

The night, all things considering, goes on without incident until Lestrade finally catches John brooding in a corner away from the dance floor. "Penny for your thoughts?" 

"Three snipers," John recites. "One for you, one for me, one for Mrs. Hudson." 

"Think that one was yours?" 

John nods. For all Lestrade knows he could be right - no trace of any snipers had ever turned up and of course no one had known what they looked like. "Bit loyal for a hired gun, no? It's not like Moriarty can pay him if he'd got you."

John shakes his head. "The organization probably still exists in some form, they would probably pay him." He taps his fingers against his wine glass. "They weren't to shoot if Sherlock jumped. He bought our lives with that jump. So if this is the same sniper..." 

"Must be a different one," Lestrade grabs a bottle of wine from a passing server and tops up John's glass. "The pair of you did make your fair share of enemies. Maybe you know something or saw something or who knows what but whatever it is done and dealt with now." 

"Doubt that." Lestrade chooses to believe John's referring to his 'done and dealt with' statement than his own sniper theory.

"You could always try and talk to Mycroft in the morning?"

John snorts. "Like that would help." 

"Not even the least bit of gratitude for that then?"

"I had him," John needlessly states. "If he thinks he can make up for everything with saving my life then he's got another thing coming."

The thought is out of Lestrade's head and out of his mouth before he can check it. "And what if you're right, then? What if Sherlock is alive after all - does it make up for the past six months if what he's done was to save your life?" He is both defending Mycroft and acknowledging an impossibility in one breath. It's been awhile since he's done that. 

John drinks his drink and doesn't answer. "I have no idea. I have no scale for something like this." 

Well who the hell would. Friends don't do this to friends. Not for this long. Not without a hint or a sign or something. That should prove that Sherlock is dead beyond all the other indefatigable proof.

But Sherlock was always stupid when it came to John. And if one kept in mind that call... 

"We need to stop this," Lestrade tells him. "It will come to no good. Either the man is dead and buried or the man is playing a horrible, horrible trick with us that is almost worse than him being dead in the first place. He's dead, John. He has to be." 

"Does he?"

Lestrade takes another drink and watches the group dance. They stay cloistered in the dark watching for who knew what for the rest of the night. Neither of them say another word.

===================================================================================== 

John eventually, formally, agrees to go to Brighton. It delights the girls and relieves Lestrade. He doesn't want to think of John alone in Baker Street for Christmas. The thought of Mrs. Hudson alone also makes him worry but she's off to visit her sister for the holidays. Baker Street will sit vacant and that is just fine with Lestrade. If he had his way the place would stand empty for all time and go to dust but, as one of John's case write ups had said, England would fall if Mrs. Martha Hudson ever left Baker Street forever. 

The house in Brighton was a refuge that Brian and Molly had afforded him far too often in his life. He'd escaped there plenty a time when things got too much at home. Him and Anne. Him, Anne and the girls. Him and the girls. Him alone. The girls alone. Sometimes it seemed as if they got more use out of the place than the actual owners did. 

John's never had a place to get away from anything properly so this is new and strange to him. As the girls split off to claim their usual territories John takes a look around the place eventually fixating on the sitting room floor length windows that face out to the sea. "Beautiful," he breathes. He angles one of the large, oversized, chairs that Karen usually favours and turns it so it faces the view. He plops down in it and Lestrade smiles. He'd been worried John wouldn't like it, worried he'd feel strange considering the separation from Baker Street and the somewhat lavish accommodations. 

John barely gets out of that chair the entire stay. He angles it back to face the room when he has to but otherwise it faces out that window and it is there that John edits, reviews, and reads. He starts on computer but eventually abandons it in favour of pen and paper. It seems that the insane number of notebooks he's brought with him is completely justified. 

The reading is not limited to his own work but also a paperback novel. The title keeps pinging at Lestrade’s brain as if he knows it but he knows he's never read it. When he asks Louise she rolls her eyes and laughs. “It’s a movie too, Dad. We own it. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale? The two magicians battling over the same trick? Getting a bit forgetful in your old age, are we?”

Michael Caine’s voice enters his head. He names off the three parts of a magic trick and how important the last part is ( _making something disappear isn’t enough. You have to bring it back_ ) along with Christian Bale’s character constantly repeating the same question throughout the film: Are you watching closely?

_Keep your eyes fixed on me. Please will you do this for me?_

Lestrade knows what he is bound to find in one of those notebooks that John keeps if he looks but decides it is better if he doesn’t. He just thinks that he's writing the Fall up and decides it's best that he keep thinking that. Even when the scribbling continues long into the night and he takes up joining Karen on her midnight smokes. 

"Text me next time," Lestrade grumbles on the night before Christmas. He fumbles for his gloves and his lighter. He finds the former while his daughter provides the latter. 

"Maybe we wanted to be alone." 

Lestrade rolls his eyes. "John, as much as I like you, you're too old for Karen."

The three of them chuckle together quietly in the cold and huddle together to share the warmth between them. "Also," Lestrade continues. "As a doctor shouldn't you be sternly lecturing her about the evils of such a filthy habit." 

John shrugs. "Not her father."

Fair is fair, he supposes.

The three of them sit in silence smoking together and Lestrade can't help but think, as he's sure John and Karen are thinking, about where they were this time last year. Lestrade can safely say that he was in bed and he can assume that Karen was as well. Lord knew what John and Sherlock had gotten up to on Christmas Eve but he's sure that it either involved intrigue or a quiet (ish) night in front of the fireplace. John would be reading or writing and Sherlock would be playing, or experimenting, or whatever he felt had to get done that second. Neither of them, living or dead, would have guessed that this was where they would be just one year later.

Karen starts humming "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" to herself. He isn't sure she's aware she's doing but neither he nor John makes any move to stop her. Through the years we all would be together indeed. 

If the fates allow, memory reminds him. If the fates allow. Are you watching closely?

He turns his attention to his cigarette and refuses to let his mind wander to that train of thought again. He succeeds until all five of them are in the kitchen getting dinner sorted, they tried to chase John out but John said he was earning his keep and that was that. While John is out of the room for a moment Karen brings up the notebooks. Lestrade tells her not to mind them. "He needs to get it out of his system and that's fine but we can't encourage him."

"What if it's true though, Dad?"

"It can't be. He wouldn't do this us."

"He'd do anything for John and everyone knows it. Especially if his life was at stake." 

He thinks about the Christmas Gala and thinks about who and what John is. "I don't know if he'd ever forgive him for that. No matter how well intentioned."

"Better to have him alive to hate him than dead adoring him, though."

John comes back to the kitchen and Lestrade has no intentions of responding to Karen at any point in the foreseeable future. The dinner is prepared without incident - though Louise was battling a bit with the potatoes this year - and when they're sitting around the table together it falls upon Lestrade to say grace. Tradition and all that despite the fairly agnostic (or atheistic) beliefs of the attendees. Lestrade says the one that he says every Christmas but hesitates bit about blessing absent friends. He manages to get through that bit and there is only a slight pause between him saying Amen and everyone else saying Amen.

Conversation is lively, it seems the girls have had a meeting and have decided to regale them with every amusing story that they've encountered all the year long - the fact that their father is in attendance be damned. Lestrade prefers to hear as little of Tess's antics as possible but even he has to admit that she has some great ones. The one about her freshers week where she'd ended up atop a church spire is still funnier now than it had been while driving, furious, to Belfast.

John laughs and shares a few of his own - most of which involve Sherlock and that brings a little bit of hope to Lestrade's heart. As the girls and John settle in to watch whatever movie that is on right now Lestrade considers that there is someone who should get a call tonight. He excuses himself to his room and selects Mycroft Holmes from his contact list.

"Inspector Lestrade," comes the cool, clipped voice. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Happy Christmas," he answers. "How are you keeping?"

There is maybe a half second of silence before Mycroft speaks again but this is a question that has taken him aback. It occurs to Lestrade that he is very rarely asked this question. "Well enough," he continues as easily as anything. "Work to be done and all that."

"Spend Christmas alone then?"

"Hardly, Inspector. I spent the morning and afternoon with my mother - do tell John that she would love to see him when he has the heart to come up here." 

Lestrade is speechless. He didn't realise that Violet Holmes had met John. Then again he supposes that meeting hadn't been entirely Sherlock's choice. Much like the first time Harry Watson hat met Sherlock with less hysterics he imagines. With the obvious exception of Mycroft, neither Sherlock or John were much for including their families in their daily lives. John because he had none but Harry remaining and Sherlock because he, very deep down, felt terrible for hurting his mother with the drugs. "I'll do that." He almost offers to bring John up to talk but remembers that John is not one to make exceptions to sworn promises to never speak to someone again just because it's Christmas. 

"Thank you. I trust your daughters and John are well."

"Daughters, yes. John is well enough."

"Ah." So much conveyed in one syllable. "Regrettable."

There is so much that Lestrade wants to say to that but he holds his tongue. There's nothing to be gained right now from a shouting match. It's not like anything anyone does will get John back to the man he was. Not without a miracle.

"It couldn't have been a trick, could it?"

Mycroft doesn't need clarification. He sighs. "No. No mistake, Inspector. I wish it were otherwise. Deeply so."

Sherlock had once made some sort of remark that he would die alone and un mourned. How wrong had he been. He almost wishes the man could see it.

He wishes Mycroft Holmes a happy Christmas and a happy New Year and is wished the same in return before he rings off. He'll get in touch with Mrs. Hudson once she's back in town, maybe take her out for lunch or something.

When he gets downstairs Louise and John have dozed off while Tess and Karen are providing running commentary for whatever's on the telly. It looks like Die Hard 2. Everyone looks happy or at least a peace for the time being. Brighton, as always, has sheltered them all from everything and Lestrade can honestly say he has not seen John look better. They have to go back though. They have jobs and responsibilities and all that rot. Even if Lestrade bought this house from his brother and gave it to John there was no way he'd accept it. No way he'd stay for good. John will always answer London's siren call, Sherlock or no Sherlock. He wants to capture this moment somehow, bottle it, and forcibly administer it to John when they get back to London when he knows he's going to get a call from Mycroft saying he's on the roof again. Or when they leave Sherlock's grave on New Year's Eve. They've already made a date to do that much. Then he's coming over to his. The girls he's sure will all of plans but they should be able to get a pint or have a quiet night in. That is unless John volunteers to work that night. He is almost resigned to receiving that call. 

That call does come and Lestrade ends up Sherlock's grave alone. There's the lucky cat perched on the gravestone as a token that John has been there. When he's at home with Tess, who has come down with a touch of the flu, he gets a message from Mycroft telling him that John is back on the roof. He'd hoped that John would last a touch longer than this. After he makes sure that Tess is settled in for the night he meets John up there with a bottle of champagne. They toast the new year and John cues up an old recording of Sherlock playing "Auld Lang Syne" on the violin at midnight. 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, indeed. 


	7. Chapter Seven

March comes in like a lamb this year. Bright sunny skies and a temperature so mild that Lestrade is sweltering in his coat on his latest crime scene. Burglary - it's easy enough to solve even if John was not here to help him but his book is out tomorrow and Lestrade doesn't want to leave him to the wolves. Mycroft has apparently been handling precisely which media outlets are allowed to interview John and is doing whatever he can to keep everyone else off his back but Lestrade would rather have him here. The personal time on John's end has been booked and Lestrade is doing his best to keep an open schedule. John does his best to keep busy nowadays so this is quite the change of pace for him.

Between the New Year's Eve Rooftop Visitation and mid last week John has run so fast and worked so hard that it is a wonder that he hasn't collapsed from exhaustion. He tries his best to stay busy between writing, working, helping at any crime scene that Lestrade summons him to, and his newly developed gym habit. Louise goes to the same gym and sometimes sees him. She says he's a fantastic motivational tool.

After New Year's John had managed to avoid going to the roof again. Lestrade never drew attention to it. He imagined if asked why John would say that he didn't want to worry anyone when really he was probably trying his best to not scare himself. Lestrade kept up his monthly visitations to Sherlock's grave but had a distinct feeling, judging by some of the tokens on the grave, that John was visiting far more often than he ever had before. On the occasions that his visitations have coincided with John's he's caught him reading excerpts to the head stone or even just sitting there reading a book or taking more notes. 

Lestrade knows what he is bound to find in one of those notebooks that John keeps if he looks but decides it is better if he doesn’t. Lestrade should be telling him to stop but he already has in his own way. Part of him is demanding that he beat the idea out of John’s head but the rest of him tells him it’s all up to John and that it's been up to John since the very beginning.

John is bored right now and a bored John is almost as dangerous as a bored Sherlock. He decides to just stop dragging this out more than he has to and orders out the cavalry to get the small time game that were responsible. "I want them in front of my desk by nightfall." He has no doubt that that will be precisely the case. This really is shockingly open and shut. Sherlock would have never come down for this. Actually, Lestrade never ever would have even considered calling him in for this one. It wouldn't be worth the abuse.

John appears next to him. "Bored now." It's just a simple phrase but Lestrade hears it as a warning. John keeps busy for a very good reason and any hiccoughs now when he's been doing so well can only be a bad thing. He apologizes for the inconvenience as much as he can without it being too over the top. 

"Can't control what I get in on any given day," he shrugs. "I was hoping for a little bit more to develop here but..." he throws up his hands. John snickers.

"Silly of me to demand a homicide every other the day. I'm getting far too specific nowadays." John snickers and Lestrade thinks that if he smiles much harder he's going to explode. He hasn't heard a remark like that from John in a good long while. He's so pleased and chuffed and all that that he doesn't even think about what he's agreeing to when John asks him to come to the gym with him. He's at home and getting his stuff when it hits him. He texts Louise to ask her exactly how much of a mistake he's made.

_Prepare to have your arse handed to you. Just remember you have a life you enjoy while John has a life he tolerates. You have to get that anger out somehow._

If it takes John six months to move through each stage of grief it would take two and a half years before anything sort of normal or acceptable would ever be applied to what John thinks of his life. Lestrade shoves a pair of trainers into a duffle bag with more force than necessary. He is the last remaining friend of John's that he acknowledges. If John has decided that he wants to fight for something approaching normal, if he has decided that fading quietly into the night is not an option for him after all, then Lestrade will do whatever he has to.

Louise, he discovers, was not exaggerating in her report. John spends less than five minutes orientating Lestrade to the gym and then he throws himself into it. He leaves Lestrade in his dust very early on but he doesn't concern himself too much with that. He leisurely works his way through the machines, weights, and then transfers himself to Louise's favourite - the stationary bike - to watch John some more.

It really is deucedly impressive with John's capabilities even considering that he's a military man. Anyone, even Sherlock on speed, would have dropped by now. When Lestrade decides to vacate the premises for the pool, he'd come across a pair of swim trunks in his bag that he really hoped still fit, it takes John about fifteen minutes to join him. "Though you didn't do pools?" he asks as he leisurely kicks to the side. 

John slips in, hisses at the cold, and plops a kickboard in front of him. "I didn't," he agrees. The first meeting of Moriarty had been lucky for all involved but one case following involving a public pool had John so antsy that Sherlock had actually dragged him off the scene to pull him back to reality. Then he'd informed Lestrade that they were leaving with the comment that he wasn't going to set foot near one again until further notice. "We don't work around pools." That had been that. 

The slow lane is surprisingly quiet, or at least Lestrade finds it so. He hasn't set foot in a pool since the girls were smaller. He and John are able to swim side by side without any retribution from the other swimmers in the lane or the lifeguards. It's comfortable just swimming side by side, if you can call just kicking swimming, with nothing to bother them. He doesn't talk until John starts to apologize for leaving him in his wake. "It's alright," Lestrade assures him. "You've got far more stress to burn out of your system than I do."

John huffs. "Thanks for reminding me. It's going to be a circus tomorrow."

"Sounds like Mycroft has you covered though."

"That he does," John sighs. "I'm very likely going to be very grateful for that tomorrow." 

"You say that like it annoys you." 

"It does. Very much so." 

Lestrade sighs. He pauses at the deep end wall. "Maybe it's time to forgive Mycroft? He did lose his brother after all."

John glares at him. "Okay," Lestrade allows. "Too soon for that." John doesn't say anything to that, not even a generalizing statement about how he's never going to forgive Mycroft. Improvement is being shown on all accounts it seems. It's almost disconcerting. Lestrade keeps the conversation about the book rolling. John's got interviews more or less all day tomorrow, they will be the only ones he will give on the subject at all and he has refused to take the book on tour. His publisher must be crying at all the money they're going to lose from the loss of a tour but the sensation will probably prompt sales enough to compensate. Perhaps more. John is honestly hoping to make as little money from his as possible. 

"I don't know what to do with anything I do get. I don't plan on keeping it." 

"You could always give it to Mrs. Holmes." Lestrade had relayed the message from Christmas to John and he's supposed to be seeing the Holmes matriarch on the weekend. 

"I don't think she'll take it."

"Then donate it to charity like I said." 

John shrugs. He hops out of the pool and tells Lestrade that he's getting cold. He follows, they change, and just before they go their separate ways - John to who knows where and Lestrade back to the Yard - John hands him a parcel. "I didn't get all that many advance copies but there's one for you. I can probably get some more for the girls if they're interested."

Lestrade thanks him. John promises to call him as soon as he's off promotion detail tomorrow. Lestrade wishes him luck as he walks away.

Later that night Lestrade flips to the last story in the book. He's read the other cases from the drafts that John had given them months before and he has never asked John about how The Reichenbach Fall was going and John had never asked him for any input on it. The title stares at him like the etching on a tombstone but Lestrade steels himself and sets about the reading of it. 

He knows most of this story. Part of it was from being there and the other parts resulted from the investigation after the fact and what little John would speak of it. Most of what tugs at his heart and what is new to him is the little moments between John and Sherlock before the end. Sherlock's bafflement that John was upset by what people thought of him, Sherlock's barely restrained fear that John believed the lies as well (Lestrade could see that lurking behind the _can't you see what's going on?_ as well as he would have heard it). John, he thinks, hadn't got that at the time but had responded correctly in spite of it.

He chuckles at John punching Gregson, he smiles fondly at the scene of John and Sherlock running handcuffed together and then leaping in front of a bus. He would have paid money to see Kitty Riley's face when she'd walked into her flat to find the pair of them sitting there and he really wishes he'd seen the confrontation with Moriarty for many other reasons. 

He knows that John's last words to Sherlock face to face were not friendly ones. He'd called him a machine and had stormed off. That had been planned, naturally, and Lestrade wonders how he could not have seen that. Hindsight is twenty/twenty though; Lestrade probably would have done the same thing if he'd been in John's shoes. What finally breaks Lestrade is the final bit, the ending to the book as well as the story:

_"By the time I returned to the hospital, he was on the roof. Sherlock standing on the edge. He called me. Tried to convince me that he was a fake. That everything they said about him was true. I wouldn't believe it. I still won't. He was being forced to say it. Had to say it._

_Then he jumped._

_I owe him so much. I needed him. I still do._

_But he's gone._

_He told me once that I shouldn't make people into heroes. He said that heroes didn't exist and even if they did he wouldn't be one of them._

_Which goes to show. He wasn't always right about everything._

There's so much more there. So much that has been glossed over and so much that is beyond words and it kills Lestrade that most of the morons that will pick this up and read it won't see it. They'll see a bit of overwrought writing and not understand exactly how hard John had to pull and how deep he had to go to get that onto paper. He can't go more detailed than he just did and even this feels too personal. 

If anyone even mentions this in an interview Lestrade is going to kill them. Damn the law and damn security and damn Mycroft. If anyone even mentions this story, this conclusion, on camera he is going to end them. The rational part of him reminds him that he probably won't need to worry about that - Mycroft probably has approved all the questions beforehand and will deliver his own brand of swift justice should anyone stray. 

John may not be able to thank Mycroft, forgive him, or feel comfortable with being grateful to him but Lestrade is alright with the first and the last. Forgiveness on his end is not what's needed or what's required. The only people who can forgive Mycroft are John and Sherlock and Lestrade thinks that he will wait a long time to hear those words. Mycroft is a patient man though.

Lestrade sets the book on the nightstand. It's a black cover with a simple outline of two figures standing in an open doorway. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" is emblazoned above the scene with John's name in very small writing on the bottom. As always, John is giving himself little credit. Or else someone else is. 

He shuts off the light and tries to sleep. It takes some doing but he accomplishes it. His dreams are filled with Sherlock and John running and dying and being pulled apart and put back together. He waits and begs to wake up - he knows he's dreaming and he needs it all to just stop - but he pleas go unheeded.

===================================================================================== 

If he thinks about it long and hard he knows that there was buzz before the actual release date. He remembers articles in the paper, a few little snippets on the news, but nothing as astronomical as when the book is actually out in the open. On the 6th of March it's like an atom bomb hits London. The book is everywhere. It's in shop windows, people's hands, people's bags, everywhere. It's always the book too. Little mention of John or Sherlock, or photographs of either, but just "The Book." Something tells Lestrade that this was all on purpose but whether it's by John's or Mycroft's design he remains unsure. 

He doesn't watch all the interviews but the one that he does see on after work looks as awkward as anything but goes off without a hitch. The only thing that makes alarms go off in Lestrade's head is something John says in response to what he plans to do now that the book is out. The response is matter of fact and almost sounds like an expert's testimony at a trial.

"I've cleared his name and now I've set out the facts of what he did for a living. The truth is out there for all who want to find it and now it's time I went back to my old life."

That has multiple meanings (the life before the book? the life before Sherlock? ) and none of which inspire confidence. Any hope of confidence being inspired is erased with an immediate call from Mycroft asking if John has said anything to him. Of course he hasn't and he finds himself watching John very closely over the next few weeks. Mycroft and him talk more and more often during this time and it feels just like the old days. Both sets of them. 

John acts very much the same, still busy as anything but mostly in work now. He still comes to crime scenes if he can but Louise reports that she hasn't seen him at the gym in some time. "He could be going at night though," she offers as a bit of hope. Louise doesn't really like working out at night - especially on her own. Lestrade has his girls trained well on that front. 

He thinks back to that first conversation on the roof. John is showing no signs of officially calling it a day but Lestrade has to believe him when he'd said that he wouldn't never do anything where Mrs. Hudson would find him. He also has to believe that John doesn't want to worry anyone needlessly. Well, he's got two people for certain worried about him and Lestrade is going to add a third whether or not Mycroft agrees with him or not. Mrs. Hudson deserves to armed with the truth and prepared for anything.

It's not a pleasant conversation by any stretch. There's a lot of tutting and "oh dears" and one very, very quiet "oh, my boys" that Lestrade pretends not to hear. "You can't let on," he warns her. "Just keep an eye out."

"I've always got an eye out, love." The sigh that carries from Baker Street to Lestrade's ear sounds every single second of its seventy six years. "Nothing you're saying is any news to me." 

Lestrade's sigh sounds just as old to his own ears. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Hudson."

"Nothing for it. Try not to let it drag you down too."

Lestrade promises that he'll do his best. 

Between the 6 March release date and one year anniversary of Sherlock's jump the "I Believe in Sherlock Holmes" movement escalates. Dimmock tells him that there are more distinct pieces of art and slogans than there were even at the start a year ago. Even Banksy has gotten involved now. It drives the higher ups to distraction. Lestrade cheerfully informs Gregson that vandalism is not his division and he gets a high five from Dimmock later for it. “It’s true, thought. That’s Landers’ division. Not like you know anything about it anyway.” 

Lestrade keeps mum on that front. He thinks he has done a very good job ignoring the paint splashed clothing in the house and the aerosol smell in Karen's room. Also a touch in Tess's. Louise seems above it all until her graduation ceremony from IOE and Lestrade observes a bit of purple paint underneath her bare nails. He says nothing. Louise will be starting as an NQT in the autumn and he'd rather not jeopardize that. Not that Karen and Tess will be in any less trouble - Tess will be doing a Master's year back in Belfast and Karen will be starting at the University of Cardiff. They are careful though, they do have a father who is a copper and a friend/odd uncle figure in the late Sherlock Holmes after all.

John, who is again the obvious suspect in the resurgence, tells Lestrade he is doing nothing to encourage it and Lestrade believes him. He hadn't before so why would he start now. What he tells the media on the rare occasion someone manages to accost him on the street or heading into 221b is the same thing he had always said before. Tess texts him a new mashup video with updated footage and audio only of John asserting that he will always believe in his best friend. 

Two days before the year anniversary "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" hits one million copies sold and Lestrade is invited over to 221b Baker Street for the first time since arriving to arrest Sherlock. He takes a stiff drink before he heads over. He's never wanted to impose on John and John has never offered an invitation into the flat. He's paid for dinners out and brought over food to Lestrade to keep things even but Baker Street has always been hands off to anyone except John. Even Mycroft stays well away. If John wants to keep the flat as a shrine that is John's business. Not that anything anyone would say to him would change his mind. 

He actually almost refuses the invitation when it is made. A part of him feels wrong in coming over, that he hasn't earned the right to come back. He doesn't say any of this out loud but John has one of his possessed-by-Sherlock moments and tells him that he's more than welcome. Also that if he doesn't come he'll take it as a personal insult. 

Lestrade is prepared for a shrine, is prepared for anything it seems but for the obvious: that the flat is mostly unchanged. It is certainly cleaner and free of any of Sherlock's equipment or experiments but there is a jar of fingers serving as a centre piece on the kitchen table, the Cluedo board still stabbed in the wall, and a much abused rubix cube is sitting perched on Sherlock's armchair. The skull observes the small party (just him, John, and Mrs. Hudson) and almost looks relieved to see them.

John is sitting in Sherlock's chair nervously holding a glass of champagne. Mrs. Hudson has pulled up a kitchen chair for herself and waves Lestrade to John's chair. John is crawling with the need to switch places with him but if anyone can sit in Sherlock's chair it's John. He supposes it would have been easier if they'd just moved over toward the sofa but it was a little awkward to bring that up now. The more they drink though the slightly more relaxed he gets. He signs their books with a smile that's earnest enough but the discomfort with the whole affair - book, day, death, everything - is being telegraphed loud and clear. Lestrade doesn't make an offer to switch seats. When, finally, they actually raise a glass and Mrs. Hudson gives a proper toast it's better meant for a funeral than a supposed celebration. If they weren't officially at a wake they certainly were now. The conversation turns to reminisces; of cases past, of cases refused, of the cases that John told, and the cases that John did not. 

"Are you going to write another one?" Lestrade asks when they’ve moved from champagne something stronger and Mrs. Hudson has retired for the night. 

“Doubt it,” John slurs. “The last case is the Fall, remember?”

“There’s more there though. You didn’t write them all.”

“Not sure that I can.” Lestrade knows he’s not referring to the time that would need to pass for some of those stories to be told even with names and dates and places changed. Or to the gag order placed on him and Sherlock both by either the Yard or the clients or any other obstacle of mere formality. John has written his last, one way or the other. Lestrade asks John what he means by that before he’s able to keep his tongue behind his teeth where it belongs but John has passed out. His fingers still stubbornly hold onto his half empty glass; if his fingers had slipped he’d have ruined the upholstery. 

Lestrade takes that as a sign that John is not done with life yet. His opinion wavers when he finds the notebooks under Sherlock’s chair. He knows what's in them and knows that he shouldn't look but he does anyway. There are diagrams of the hospital. Thoughts and theories about how Sherlock could have swindled them all. Written in the margins are snatches of that final phone call, certain words and phrases underlined harshly or written in upper case. Another sentence rings through his head in Sir Michael Caine's voice: _Am I watching closely?_

Lestrade has to ask himself the same question. He puts them back, shakes his head and moves John to the couch. He sends himself home in a cab slightly drunk and very worried.

The next day, the 15th, he needs to call John in on a case. John is hungover but arrives when he says. They don’t discuss Sherlock Holmes or ‘The Adventures.' Lestrade texts him asking if he needs him with him today. John says he's fine. Lestrade doesn't answer the call from Mycroft - he knows where John has gone. He does check his phone when it beeps with a text message.

_Are you following him? MH_

No hesitation in his reply. _No._

_Do you think that's wise? MH_

_Perhaps not, but it's what needs to be done._

_I have no surveillance. He's dismantled the cameras again. MH_

Lestrade holds his breath and counts to five. John wouldn't jump, he'd want something certain. He also would choose someplace where no one would him. _He won't do anything tonight._

_Another night? MH._ When Lestrade doesn't reply right away Mycroft sends another text saying he's posting surveillance from other buildings. Lestrade does not warn John. Instead he does what he has to do and wanders to Sherlock's grave. A few minutes later Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft join him. Karen, Tess, and Louise appear shortly after that. The headstone is littered with tribute from an influx of strangers. The three of them stand together until, finally, almost an hour later, John arrives. 

It's a testament to a lot of things, Lestrade has to say, that the eight of them can be here so long without saying a word and meet here without any plans to do so. Here, as the sun sets on one year without Sherlock Holmes. Will each year be like this? Does he want each year to get easier? No answers to his questions. One by one the vigil shrinks - Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson first, the Lestrade family second. John makes no move to leave. 

"You okay?" he asks.

"I'm where I need to be." 

He clasps John's shoulder. He talks loudly to his daughters as John starts to speak.

=====================================================================================

According to Mycroft's email the next morning. John spends the night there. He did report to work this morning and he does seem to be in fair enough health. Tired and achy to be sure but alive and able to function in the A&E. Good thing too, there was an accident this morning and he's certain to be up to his elbows in that mess. Lestrade breathes a little easier and then goes about dealing with the priority item of the past few days. The Adair case is still anyone's guess but he can at least review what is known and documented before heading out to the flat again. He sips his morning coffee and gets down to it. 

"Suicide. Carefully constructed, quite brilliant if I do say so myself. I can walk you through it if you'd like."

Every rational bone in his body tells him that he is hallucinating. This is a strange form for an epiphany to take but he'll take what he can get with this one. He hears the words again in his head and notes the weariness, caution, and slight touch of satisfaction there. The thought that John was right flashes through his mind before he looks up to find Sherlock Holmes living and breathing in his doorway.

He doesn't ask how he got by anyone, he's holding a mess of fake hair and a hat in one hand and some books in the other so there's the answer to that. He doesn't scream, start, swear or anything. He looks him up and down and asks him if he's seen John yet. Sherlock shakes his head. 

Lestrade swears softly then. "Why the hell are you here then you daft, heartless pillock?"

Sherlock tries to speak but Lestrade silences him with another less than savory word. "You get out of here the same way you came in and go to John. Try not to kill him, or let him kill you, because I would like to get an explanation. In two hours we will agree this meeting never took place. Got it?"

Sherlock nods. He's in disguise and out in less than a second. It's only then that Lestrade shoves his head between his knees and takes deep breaths until he feels less like he's going to pass out.

"Well, fuck me..." he breathes to his empty office. Thank God, Sherlock had shut the door on his way out. One miracle was all they'd asked of him and he'd delivered. Of course he had. He's Sherlock bloody Holmes. Death is just a minor inconvenience rather than a permanent end in his world.

A sea of emotions and issues and questions start their assault but Lestrade forces his mind shut and locks it tight. He's not feeling anything or dealing with anything until Sherlock has talked to John. Then he at least as a context in which he can act or speak. If John forgives him on sight he's going to have to as well. If John shoots him in the face...well, he's going to have to help dispose of a body then. 

He wonders if that grave is empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The excerpt from John's book post- Reichenbach is a direct quote from "Sherlock: The Casebook" by Guy Adams published by BBC books.


	8. Chapter Eight

Sherlock at least had the decency to wait until John got home. Lestrade spent most of his workday in fear that Sherlock would burst into the A&E or his consulting room at the clinic - he'd been rehired there after the book was no longer there to occupy his time. He is shocked when he hears nothing until the he gets a call from John demanding to know if he'd had known about this all along. Lestrade assures him that he did not and it seems that Sherlock has given John no inkling that he knew first. "Are you alright?" is probably the most ridiculous thing he can say right now but he says it anyway.

"I'm not sure," he tells him after actually pausing for a moment. "I think I need to be on my own for a bit. I'm sending him to yours so try not to have a heart attack when you see him." Lestrade thinks that that's John prepping him for his first sight of Sherlock alive in a year but really it's to warn him about the state of Sherlock's face.

"Jesus Christ..."

Sherlock's nose has been set but the black eye is going to take at least a week to fade away and his jaw barely escaped being broken as well. "Are your daughters at home?" he asks.

Tess is not but Louise and Karen are. He goes upstairs first to warn them before they come downstairs. Louise shoves her hands in her pockets to keep from hugging him or fetching new bandages while Karen proclaims him an idiot. "Not as good a plan as you thought, was it?" 

Sherlock grumbles something that's lost in him collapsing onto the couch. Louise offers food, which Sherlock of course declines. Karen threatens calling the media unless he eats something so he accepts a bit of their left over dinner eventually. The girls respectfully vanish upstairs to leave the two of them to talk - Lestrade fully expects that Karen is poised at the top of the stairs listening but he really isn't bothered enough to chase her back to her room. 

"You waited for him at Baker Street?" Lestrade prompts. 

"In disguise," Sherlock begins. "He had stopped on the way home to pick up some groceries. I don't know why I didn't just take off the disguise right when he saw me but I followed him up, in character, and tried to talk to him that way." 

Lestrade groans. "When will you ever learn that dramatics don't make things easier?"

"I know now. He fainted when I pulled off the beard."

"Seriously?" He forgets that John has PTSD quite often but he really hadn't thought John to be that sort of a man when it came to a shock like this.

"For thirty seconds on the landing and once he came to he punched me. Several times." He holds up a hand when Lestrade moves. "Don't tell me I deserve it; I deserve worse and I know it."

"Actually I was going to find you some clean bandages. You can keep talking - I'll hear you from down the hall."

He talks but does not say anything of substance. He tells him that John had hauled him into the flat, instantly guilty and had done what work he had seen. Sherlock had tried to tell his story as best as he could, how he'd faked his death and how it had all been to protect him. "I didn't mean for it to take so long. I thought I could accomplish everything within a month or so - I did not plan for this. I did not _want_ this." Lestrade busies himself with re bandaging and Sherlock presses on before any comment can be made on what he's said. He finishes with John saying that he needs to be alone for now and that he'll text him when he's ready to see him again. Lestrade doesn't pry, whatever has been said is between Sherlock and John, but whatever has been said has cut Sherlock deeply. The deepest that Lestrade has seen anybody cut since getting the call from John that Sherlock was dead.

"I didn't expect to be forgiven," Sherlock is saying now. "I was hoping for him to understand the logic of what had to be done - "

"Completely wrong approach there, mate," Lestrade near laughs. "Dramatics aren't good for making difficult things easy but expecting logic from someone who has been that emotionally effected is quite another thing entirely." He really hopes that Sherlock had phrased it better to John that he is to him right now. 

Sherlock makes a noise that is a perfect combination of a growl and a groan. "I know that now, thank you Lestrade." He bats Lestrade's hands away and buries his face in his own. "He understood nothing and I do not blame him for it. I expected this. I deserve this. Why am I so...so hurt?" He has the decently to sound confused and guilty when he says it. It takes a beat for Lestrade to realise that he actually means it. 

He looks at the man again and sees the old Sherlock that is once again angered and confused by normal, emotional, human behavior and a new Sherlock that did everything he knew how to keep the person that meant the most to him safe only to have that man spurn him for it. Sherlock hasn't told him how he did it and Lestrade pushes the itching desire to know that right here and right now away. The how doesn't matter, and it won't matter to John once he's cooled off a bit. 

"He'll come around," Lestrade assures him. "Eventually." John may be hurt but Lestrade has to believe that he'll want Sherlock back in his life regardless of whatever he had to do. 

The Christmas Gala comes floating back to him and what he'd said about Mycroft. "Did John tell you that he suspected you were alive all along?"

Judging by the look on Sherlock's face it looks like he hadn't. Lestrade prays that the man stays alive during this speech but he tells Sherlock about the past year, about how bad John was, about the book (which Sherlock has read, actually), and about his ideas. "You should see those notebooks if he ever lets you see them. They are insane." 

"That explains it," Sherlock sighs. "It's one thing for a friend to return from the grave. It's quite another to have a friend return to you in confirmation of a deception you hoped you had imagined."

"I wouldn't say that John hoped he was wrong."

"Perhaps not," Sherlock sighs. "But I have disappointed him. Again."

"You did it to save him."

Sherlock nods. "I did" is all he says for a long moment as he picks at his food. He eats about two thirds of it before setting it aside. Lestrade puts on the telly for some background noise and they're fifteen minutes into some awful game show when his mobile beeps. _Send him back._

He turns the screen to face Sherlock. "Told you," he grins. He can't help doing so and he can't help having already mostly forgiven him. He still wants to hear how Sherlock did it and he wants to tear apart any notion Sherlock had of this being the only way but, really, he's back. He's back and that's a miracle and Lestrade can't find it in himself to be angry at that. 

Sherlock does not feel as convinced. It's written all over his face and Lestrade's joking promise that John won't hit him again does not help. "He's letting me back in to his home," he corrects. "Not anywhere else."

Lestrade thinks long and hard before he speaks. He reaches his hand out to clasp Sherlock's shoulder and he doesn't feel any resistance when hand meets coat. "You knew this was going to happen," he reminds him. "You got his trust instantly when you first met him. Now you're going to have to earn it properly."

Sherlock shakes his head. "I'm not sure I can."

"If he means as much to you as I know he does you will bloody well try. He's willing to at least let you do that much if he's inviting you back." He doesn't want to watch this friendship splinter. He doesn't want to see what both men become if this falls apart after all. "You owe him that. You owe him whatever he decides you owe him and you knew that going in."

Sherlock offers no argument. He thanks Lestrade and heads back out into the night. He rings John instead of texting him to tell him that he's on his way.

"How is he?"

"Destroyed," Lestrade reports. "He knows he deserves whatever you decide to throw at him but I don't think he expected it to hurt this much."

"Brain without a heart remember?" He is far too snide for Lestrade's liking.

"Now you know that's not true. His motivations are the same whether he actually died or didn't. Remember that much if you choose to remember nothing else as he grovels at your feet for the next while."

It's quiet on John's end. Far too quiet. "I'm not sure I can forgive him. I...I don't know how we come back from this."

Lestrade tells him exactly what he told Sherlock. That they are who they are and that if they value their friendship they'll at least try. "I'm not going to tell you to take him back, I'm not you and he didn't hurt me quite the same way. You care about him still, let him try to earn you back."

"You sound like you're giving me relationship advice." 

"Close enough, I reckon."

"I'll try," John finally agrees. "I'll try to try at any rate."

"That's all anyone can ask of you."

=====================================================================================

Lestrade calls a staff meeting after he gets off the phone with John. Something quiet at the Yard's local and well out of earshot of anyone who might want to overhear. He briefly wonders if it is prudent to be telling everyone now but decides that the news will be out soon enough, Sherlock hadn't come to him or left him in disguise after all. If he's doing that, he also has to admit, then John is safe. Everyone is safe.

His staff meeting consists of Donovan, Anderson, and Dimmock. The three of them think him mad for a few moments until Donovan decides that she believes him. "You wouldn't have called us here otherwise," she offers as explanation to the group. "If you were going mad you'd be doing it quietly at home and not drawing us all into it. In any case, we'll know for sure soon enough."

Famous last words. The papers explode with the story and for fortnight they are crawling to know the truth. Camp Baker Street remains mum and the one time that a reporter manages to accost John on the street results in an assault charge that both Lestrade and Mycroft work to make disappear. "Idiot deserved it," he informs his daughters. "That does not mean that violence is the answer to anything, and if I hear or any of you punching reporters I will have you spend the night in jail."

All three daughters roll their eyes simultaneously. Especially Karen. When she'd fought those girls for Lila Jones Lestrade had bought her ice cream.

The truth does eventually come out and everyone worships and grovels at the feet of the Reichenbach Hero and his Devoted Friend. Neither speak to the press, naturally, and it eventually simmers down to something where Sherlock feels comfortable coming onto a case without being followed. It's nothing that would have bothered Sherlock in the old days but Lestrade thinks that he's tired of worrying about who is following him and why. 

The first crime scene Sherlock comes to is a double homicide involving two flatmates. He does not draw attention to the fact that John is not with him and he solves the crime in ten minutes: they'd been fighting over the television remote. In those ten minutes, Sherlock looks to his right twelve times, he waits for responses that only John would give four times, and he actually calls for him twice. It's the last bit of data that is especially telling to Lestrade: Sherlock would make the mistake once and then never repeat it normally - twice in a ten minute period is usually an unforgivable lapse.

John, to the best of Lestrade's knowledge, is proceeding on willpower alone. He works, he's rejoined the gym, and he's long disabled comments on the blog. Can't say that anybody blames him for that one. He hasn't written anything on it since the thank you for the support with regards to the book.

"Have you read the book yet?" Lestrade asks Sherlock on the one month anniversary since his return and on the second night he climbs over Lestrade's garden wall for a smoke and a chat with something that will talk back to him properly. This time Sherlock slowly nods out a yes.

"All things considering it is well done," he admits. "Dramatic, sentimental, and romantic at points but well done."

That was dramatic, sentimental, and romantic praise coming from Sherlock. Of course, Lestrade has to ruin it. "I think writing out the last case nearly killed him."

"The past year nearly killed him. Thank you for assuring that it didn't."

"I didn't do anything."

"Yes, you did." Sherlock scoffs. "You did far more good than I did."

To anyone else, to Lestrade a year ago, this would have just been Sherlock harshly correcting yet another thing he'd got wrong or some opinion he had dared speak aloud. This time, and it's either because he's gotten better at hearing it or Sherlock is letting him hear it, he hears the honest gratitude and the self loathing.

"You did what you knew how to," Lestrade tries to soothe. Again. "It was an extreme - both heartless and selfless. John knows that." 

"He won't talk to me," Sherlock starts again. "He talks to me about the boring things. About the milk and the rent and the weather and all the things that he doesn't care about. That don't matter. He doesn't talk to me about anything else."

"If it helps he isn't too much better with me." It's true. John and him have apparently silently and mutually decided to not talk about it when they go for lunch. This is also the only time he ever sees John anymore. "He needs time and he'll come 'round."

Sherlock angrily finishes the cigarette and lights up another one. This time he doesn't explode about how John is being idiotic. He's not quite sure whether or not to call that improvement. 

=====================================================================================

One month and one week after the return he gets a call from John. "I'm on the roof." It's the first time he's set foot up there in weeks as far as Lestrade or Mycroft knows. When he arrives John is sitting on the ledge facing the city below with his knees tucked under his chin. 

"Alright?" He is running out of ways to stop asking after John's welfare from sounding stupid. 

"Just sit." 

"Wh-"

"With me. Please."

"You're not...."

"Don't be stupid, I wouldn't do that to him. Now now. Just sit."

Lestrade does so. Bunching his legs up like that is less comfortable for him than it is for John and he feels too awkward sitting so he's starting at him. He gulps and slowly lets his legs out to dangle over the edge. When he does not immediately plummet to his death he begins to relax.

"You were afraid of heights all this time?" John is looking at him now and is genuinely shocked and confused. Understandable considering he's never shown a care for it before.

"Not really," he clarifies. "I'm not too comfortable with being high up with so much of myself exposed." He waggles his feet a little and, while his stomach does lurch, he already feels much better. "Not usually anyway. Seems I'm getting used to it."

John smiles to himself. "It's amazing what you can get used to isn't it?" 

Almost there, Lestrade thinks. He's almost there...

"And it's amazing what you can't get used to either"

He's almost there and it's not Lestrade's job to push him either way. 

"I didn't have much left in me," John admits. "I don't think I would have done it myself in the end but I would have let it happen, or actively sought it. I'm as terrified of being bored as he is." He sighs. "I just don't think he understands exactly what happened and exactly what he did."

Lestrade shakes his head. "He knows and he hates himself for it."

"He told me it was better to have me alive and hating him then dead and liking him."

"I don't think he planned for exactly what that would mean. To you or to him." He doesn't mean for it to sound like a laugh but it is what it is. 

John sighs, which also sounds like a laugh, and shakes his head. "Of course not."

Lestrade wants to plead Sherlock's case but he bites his tongue. He wants to tell John that he needs to talk to Sherlock. To listen and watch and hear and observe what is screaming out of him. The man is going to explode in a whirlwind of fury if something doesn't give soon. Sherlock is trying but the man's patience can only hold so long. He needs an answer. If John wants him out he needs to make the decision soon.

When Lestrade leaves the rooftop Sherlock allows him to glimpse him from the shadows. He mouths 'he's fine' at him and then orders him back home. He appears to follow.

The next time he sees John is at the next case he calls Sherlock in on. It is as awkward as all hell but it's a step in the right direction.

===================================================================================== 

As disturbing as Sherlock's return from the grave was, and still is in some ways, life still goes on. Louise is preparing to start teaching, Tess is steeling herself for what horrors await her when she assigned her undergraduate drama students, and Karen is attacking the idea of moving to Wales with cautious vigour. Not because she's any more nervous than anyone else moving away from home for the first time but because things aren't quite right here. It is natural that Karen be troubled, her understanding with Sherlock also includes John, but she does not look pleased to be leaving things in disarray. She feels better now that John has started coming along on cases but it still worried. He tells her that things are going alright and tries to sound optimistic but, really, it's hard to watch a team that used to work so brilliantly just failing utterly at being what it was. The potential is still there, as are the foundations, but it just is not coming together.

John is torn between whether he should forgive Sherlock or not when, really, John forgave Sherlock the second he saw him walk through that door alive. Lestrade had done the same, would have done the same for John or his girls too. That's what families and friends do. 

Lestrade may not know what happened between Karen and Sherlock in those ten minutes nearly seven years ago but there some things that he does know. He does know that they have each other's numbers. He is certain they don't talk often if at all - Karen is a teenage girl after all no matter how interesting Sherlock finds her - but the fact that he has her number in his contacts list at all says everything. He suspects that Karen has never said anything since when the first text was made it was from his phone and Karen was still quite young.

He is not surprised when he checks his phone and finds that he has apparently called John today. He goes up to Karen's room and knocks. "May I come in?"

When she lets him in he almost wishes she didn't. The place is a bomb zone as she tries to sort her possessions into some semblance of order. He'd reminded her that it wasn't like she was moving across the world and they could always come back for more. She shoves a pile of clothes off the bed to make space for her father and shoves some books in the corner so she can sit in her desk chair. 

Lestrade doesn't bother beating around the bush. "So what did John tell you?"

Karen's eyes widen at being found out and Lestrade gives her his patented "your father is a copper, remember?" expression. She relaxes when she also sees that she's not in any trouble. 

"Alright," she shrugs. 

"Nothing new?"

"Don't think so."

"So why call him?"

"I wanted him to understand Sherlock's side - I don't think he's much paid attention to it."

"He's not obligated to," Lestrade reminds her. As much as everyone can understand the hows and the whys of what Sherlock had done it didn't escape the fact that it was not good and he was utterly at John's mercy as to whether or not that was a surmountable obstacle in the friendship.

Karen shrugs again. "Just wanted to remind him," she says. "He's different now. Different from when he left like he was different from who he was before John came. I don't think he understands that quite as well as the rest of us."

He can't help but be suspicious. "Did Sherlock put you up to it?"

"No!" Karen shouts, indignant. "And if he had I wouldn't have done it. I've already told him that he has to fix it himself."

There's something that Karen is skirting around. He gives her a once over and knows it for sure. Sherlock and her have talked and she knows something. Something extra but not something new. It's not like John or Sherlock are being secretive about anything; John because he's too tired and Sherlock because he's trying to show John that he won't keep secrets like he used to.

"He does believe it will get better though," she tells him. "He sounded fairly sure."

"That may have been more for your benefit, love."

Karen shakes her head. "Don't think so. There was something he said."

She tells Lestrade about how the last thing that John had said to Sherlock face to face had been that friends protect people. John had admitted that he'd done that much and that he really should punch Sherlock over how well he'd done it. Either John had forgotten he actually had punched Sherlock or was considering a second one. 

Then Karen had said that she thought Sherlock would let John to anything to him if he even had a chance at a hint of forgiveness. John had been silent after that and then had rung off. It was strange, Lestrade had to agree. It was also hopeful. This was nothing that John didn't already know but it might just be the first time that anyone has flat out told him. Sherlock certainly wouldn't, not now and probably not even on their best days, and Lestrade has considered it obvious.

And Karen - oh Karen, who he's pretty sure shouted Sherlock into consciousness after that scare a few years back - is certainly someone to tell things as they are and let facts be facts.

"Could be alright after all."

"It was always going to be alright," Karen near chides. "The question is when."


	9. Chapter Nine

Lestrade hates hostage situations. Not only for the obvious reasons but also for the fact that it never ends well. He also hates being made to feel useless and his ability to be discreet and gentle vanishes when someone has a gun to someone's head. He cannot negotiate with people like this. He will not negotiate with people like this. For the first of many times Lestrade wishes he was allowed to carry a gun. It's probably because of people like him that he isn't. Because of people like John as well. John's up on the roof with his target in sight. Thank god for Mycroft and John's license to kill or whatever it is that lets him have that thing with no consequences.

As much as he is thankful for John's presence he really doesn't want to see him actually use the thing. He may wish people dead, he may fantasize about it from time to time but whoever doesn't imagine smashing their bosses' head in a moment of stress is lying, but he doesn't want to see more than he has to. He's seen enough death in his life, personal and professional, and this whole Sherlock thing really wants him to avoid even thinking of anyone's mortality for a good six years. Sherlock is somewhere up there with him. Lestrade isn't sure why he's up there but he's glad he's not trying to negotiate. Not after the last time he'd shouted his way into somehow ending a bank robbery. He will maintain that was beginners luck until his dying day. Letting Sherlock talk today, he reminds himself, is Step one on How To End This Situation Badly...

The negotiator, Willow Ichelson, is actually doing fairly well. She's been here for three years now and she's only lost one hostage in here work with the Yard. She's only lost one other in her previous job as well. It's terrible to be thinking of lives as an indicator of job performance but she is good. The man is calmed and his grip is loosening around the neck of his partner. The man holding the gun is Hal Price and the hostage is Julien Finch. Julien is a drug dealer, a small time peddler of cheap cocaine who has managed to get himself in trouble with some bigger fish. They'd threatened his life and Hal, who had found out about this, had acted accordingly. There are three less thugs on the street thanks to him.

Until this past Monday Hal had had no idea that Julien was a cocaine dealer. Now the fact that his entire relationship has been sort of a lie has pushed him into deciding Julien needs to die too. Lestrade can already see that this is going to end as a murder-suicide. Willow is here and Willow has a chance to get this sorted but he's seen this before. Hal has saved Julien's life and he's done horrible things to keep him safe. Julien is coming with him no matter where he goes and Hal has no intention of going to jail.

"His profession is not what you thought it was but his feelings for you have not changed," Willow is urging with as much passion as Lestrade has seen overwrought Oscar speeches. She's been harping on Hal and Julien's relationship for nigh on fifteen minutes now. "How he conducts business has nothing to do with his feelings for you."

"Yes they do!" Hal cries out, tightening his grip on Julien again. Julien chokes a little but lets out a ragged breath. "He lied to me. Everything was based on a lie!"

"Not everything," Julien manages to force out. "The...job was all."

Lestrade steps away and presses his ear piece closer in. "Still in sights?"

"Affirmative," comes the quick reply. "Aim's never left his back." _Stop asking questions you already know the answer to, Greg_ is what John is really saying.

"Sherlock," Lestrade starts. Sherlock is on the same frequency as John is. "Does he have any clue that you're up there?" He doesn't really know why he's up there aside than to just watch over John. Maybe to keep him out of the way of Willow's efforts but it's not like that's stopped him before. He's interfered from every barrier but sea apparently. Sherlock eventually answers no but he is very obviously distracted. Lestrade doesn't sign off but over hears Sherlock wriggling and banging on something. The roof they are stationed on is the roof of Hal and Julien's flat block and Sherlock has been convinced since day one that Julien's been protecting Hal all this time. Julien's business hadn't bothered anyone until someone had harassed Hal on the street one night. Lestrade frankly admits that Sherlock is very probably right there but there's simply no evidence of it at present and Sherlock very badly wants to find it. 

"There's nothing there," John huffs in the background. "If he wanted to do the job properly he wouldn't leave a sign."

"Yes he would," Sherlock snapped. "I left you one, didn't I?"

Oh lads, Lestrade moans mentally. Lads, lads, lads, don't have a domestic up there. Now is really not a good time...

John snaps back that it hadn't been a very good one and it still hadn't help any when he had figured it out. "Being made to feel like you're mad is not a pleasant feeling."

"Neither is working so hard to keep one man safe! Nothing goes as fast as you like or as smooth as you like but you can't just stop!"

"You didn't need to protect me!" John snarls. "I could have helped!"

"You would have been dead before I'd spoken the words!"

Lestrade can't keep silent anymore. "SHUT UP!" he bellows. The feedback makes him wince. "Sort it later!" The negotiations have taken a bad turn - Willow has let on that she knows more than Hal does about Julien's clients and Hal had decided that this is it. "John," Lestrade whispers. "We are going to need you."

"Ready."

Lestrade lets Willow talk a little bit more, let her rattle Hal a little bit more. She gives Lestrade her signal and Lestrade gives John his. The shot fires through Hal's shoulder. Hal still manages to squeeze off a shot but his aim is off and the bullet meant for Julien's head ends up in his leg instead. From the rooftops and over the com Sherlock is yelling to Hal that Julien had been planning to tell him all along. That he'd been keeping them safe for months . "Those five unsolved murders this year," Sherlock announces. "Julien knew Hal's life was in danger and took his own steps. He's a criminal though, not Hal, so he knew how to hide his tracks and knew how to make it look. Nothing accidental or prop like, just actual fights or real standoffs that he engineered. It's been Julien you've wanted this whole year."

"What do you have to prove this?" Lestrade knows he'll be lucky if it's even admissible in court but Sherlock is very series and very confident. He tells Lestrade to get Julien to tell Hal what he'd done. He passes the message by text to Willow, who is accompanying the two to hospital along with one of his men. 

"How'd you know?" he asks before he can stop himself. He shouldn't hear whatever Sherlock has to say. He has enough imagination to piece together what Sherlock has done to keep John and them all safe. 

Sherlock doesn't keep his mouth shut but he keeps it short. "I've done it. And I did do it."

He waits to be told something about jurisdiction and what not but Lestrade just claims that interference had drowned out what he'd said. When he asks for him to repeat himself Sherlock tell him to never mind.

John is saying something in the background which infuriates Sherlock. "What?" Sherlock snaps. "Next time I'll just do nothing, is that what you want? I can't do that, John. I won't. "

"I don't want you dying for me."

"You'd have done the same."

"And hated me for it."

"You still would have done it. Any alternative results in permanent ruin for either of us."

"What makes you think we aren't ruined now?"

The sound really does cut off now and there comes the sound of someone being thrown into something. And again. And again. Lestrade rushes up the fire escape to see what's happened. What greets him is John with his hands around Sherlock's throat. He's not squeezing tight, just enough to give Sherlock reason to be concerned, and Sherlock is not resisting. He's speaking to John quietly and Lestrade does not dare step close enough to hear. This is it. This is the point of no return and maybe he just might have to clear up a body after all. Two bodies, he amends. If John throttles Sherlock, or throws him off the roof, he will follow him. It was one thing to waste away when he hadn't done the deed himself; he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he killed him. 

It is a fact which John knows and understands all too well. He finally releases Sherlock and stares at him for a moment. "A year," John tells him. "I was dead for a year. You did that to me for a year."

"I am sorry," Sherlock states. It is probably the first time that Lestrade has ever heard him speak the words and mean it since that Christmas with Molly. "I did not intend for the deception to last so long but I would not jeopardize you safety. Could not." Only Sherlock can apologize and not apologize in one breath. 

This is no secret to John but now, finally, he's in the right mind to understand the idea that Sherlock is just as much of an idiot when it comes to him as John is when it comes to Sherlock. To Lestrade's utter shock Sherlock realises this for the first time. "You actually thought I didn't...that I would..."

"Well you haven't given me much of hint otherwise," John sighs wearily. "Between being drugged and left behind and lied to and insulted and - "

Sherlock hugs him then. No warning, no sign of movement, no nothing. One moment he's leaning against the wall and the next he's wrapped around John. The only person that Lestrade has seen Sherlock hug is Mrs. Hudson, which is probably the same hug he'd give to his mother if his mother were the hugging type. This hug is vicious and protective. Lestrade respectively looks away and heads back down the stairs. Most of the force has moved out - there are only a few remains taking witness statements and chasing the reporters away.

His phone beeps.

_Karen's transportation to Cardiff has been arranged. Her flight leaves at 1300 tomorrow. MH_

And here Lestrade thought he was driving her....fuck, driving her yesterday. He'd slept at the office yesterday. He curses his stupidity and Hal Price as he texts his daughter to explain himself.

_No need! I understand - really. It's all over the news. At least Cardiff is close enough to drive to._

_Apparently you're flying_

Seriously? That's just ridiculous.

He texts Karen Mycroft's number and wishes her luck with talking him out of it. It's stupid, yes, but if Mycroft wants to charter a flight to Cardiff instead of arranging for a train or car then that was Mycroft's business. His youngest daughter is moving to uni and he almost forgot all about it, he rubs his eyes with his right thumb and forefinger. "Where is your head at?" he asks himself.

"Far too preoccupied with other matters." It's Sherlock's voice but is sounds like the Sherlock from before the Fall. Just a little bit. That Sherlock is never coming back, not entirely, and for the first time Lestrade thinks that's okay.

"Well if he wasn't where would we be? John's voice now and it sounds as alive and whole as it had before Sherlock had jumped. "I've never thanked you for that properly have I?"

"There's never been a need for it." He turns to face the two friends - _his_ two friends - and sees the united front from the days before everything fell to pieces. They're bent, they're broken, but they've come back and what they are and who they are is stronger for having survived it. He knows without asking that Sherlock will never do such an idiotically selfless thing again without entertaining options that do not include taking all the danger on himself and leaving everyone else with broken hearts. Not that John will ever fall for such a thing again or forgive him again. What is standing in front of him was a miracle before but now it is better than it was because the bond between them has been fought for and earned. 

"Still," John tells him. "Thank you." He holds out his hand. "For before and for after - I have not been an easy friend or a good friend the past while.

" Lestrade takes the hand and presses his hard as he shakes it. "You had other things on your mind. Before and after."

John smirks and chuckles a little. "That I did," he agrees. "That I did."

"If we're all quite done here," Sherlock cuts in. Too much sentiment for one day and Lestrade has to admit it's a bit much for him as well, especially considering he never plans to mention what he witnessed up there. "I believe I could eat."

"Oh so you're hungry and we have to do what you want now?" John teases affectionately.

"Obviously."

John rolls his eyes but he's practically beaming anyway. So is Sherlock but far less obviously. Lestrade takes a moment to be humbled that he's being allowed to see this, to be a part of this moment as the world gets rebuilt and the universe shifts back to where it should be. He takes stock of precisely where they are and jerks his head south. "There's a fine chip place down there." Sherlock immediately know which one he's talking of and starts briefing John about the owner's dirty secrets and how you can a chip shop is great the same way you can determine a great Chinese restaurant. Something about doors. Whatever. It's normal. It's frustrating and normal and Lestrade sighs the past year out of his system for good.

Tomorrow his world will change. His youngest will go off to uni and soon enough his oldest will move out on her own. He may be alone for the first time in his life within the next month or so and while that should make him uneasy he knows that he'll get through it. His friends are back and back at each other's sides. Tomorrow is a day for farewells but tonight he will celebrate a homecoming.


End file.
